


As the Smoke Clears

by jestbee



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Magic, Getting Together, M/M, Magic, St Mungo's Hospital, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2019-11-23 16:47:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18154463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee
Summary: Dan hates being a wizard, but magic demands to be used.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is for AdequateDuck on Twitter, who made a very generous donation in the fan works auction and asked for this.
> 
> Thank you to i-am-my-opheliac intoapuddle abd phanbliss for the constant cheerleading, you know I'd never get anything done without you
> 
> Aiming to update every other Monday (or there abouts)

Dan wonders how long it's been building. He could swear he felt fine yesterday, and definitely the day before, but you don't get the flu out of nowhere so it must have been creeping up on him for a while.

He cracks his knuckles in the quiet of his flat and looks up to find the room has turned dark around him. He's been squinting at a screen for too long and his shoulders are aching from hunching over. 

He gets up slowly, his legs somewhat shaky and unstable, muscles cold and stiff. He shuffles his way over to the light switch, avoiding furniture by memory alone in the dark. His legs ache as he moves and once the artificial light has flooded the room he pushes his fingers into his thigh through the thin barrier of his sweatpants, kneading the muscle in small, firm circles. It offers no relief at all.

He groans, dropping back down onto the couch and running a palm down his face just to feel the relief once it's gone. He feels dizzy, a bit nauseous in the pit of his stomach, and he's had a headache for most of the day. Under his clothes his skin feels tight and warm, lined with a sheen of sweat even though it's getting closer to winter all the time and the wind coming in through his partially cracked window is icy and sharp. 

He'd gone out to buy a pumpkin spiced latte at lunch time, dragged himself up and out into the fresh air in the hopes that it would help, but the drink had tasted bitter rather than sweet, like his taste buds were confused, and he hadn't been able to cool down.

He'd choked it down anyway and tried not to think about how the taste of pumpkin always reminds him of school dinners. 

At least his work day is done. He'd chosen to work from home today because he'd been feeling so ill, but it hadn't helped. He hopes this is a twenty four hour thing and not something that will morph into a larger problem, because he only has the weekend to recover before he has to go back in to the office. There's only so much data entry he can do remotely before he has to get a fresh batch of case files. 

It's pretty boring, typing up case notes and trying to decipher the handwriting of the solicitors at the firm, but it's steady. Normal. He goes to work, he gets paid, he keeps his lights on and the landlord in rent and that's that. 

He doesn't want anything else.

Except maybe for whatever germ he's picked up to do one and leave him alone. It's barely evening and yet he feels like crawling into bed. He makes himself eat something first, cobbling pasta and sauce together in a pan because it's easy and quick. He's hit with another wave of dizziness when he's standing at his stovetop and he has to reach out to steady himself with a palm on the opposite counter. 

"Fuck," he mumbles, vision swimming. He can't really see but it looked as if there was a spark of orange just where he put his hand down, a fractal of amber light like a mirage. But his head is pounding, he can feel the way his blood sloshes around behind his temples, pulsing like it's trapped there.

Whatever bug he's caught must be a bad one after all, variations on the common cold don't usually feel this bad. Maybe eating isn't that big of a deal, he should just take some paracetamol, get in to bed, and try to sleep off the headache and the fever. 

Starve a fever, feed a cold, right? Isn't that what his mum used to say? Or… someone did.

He wants to take off his shirt too. His skin is hot, clammy to the touch, and the fabric is sticking to him at the base of his spine. He squeezes his eyes shut, just for a second, just to see if he can take the edge off his nausea long enough that he can get himself to bed. 

Behind his eyelids he can see flashes of greenish-blue, ringed in a hazy purple. Something fizzes in his fingertips, itchy and unsettled. It feels familiar, even though he's sure he's never felt like this before. 

His palms are stinging. He opens his eyes and looks down and thinks he can see a thin film of peach-coloured static covering both of them. 

He sucks in a breath and tries to wish it away. Not this, anything but this. Please. 

He runs his hands down his face once again, static be damned, and stumbles towards his bedroom. Once he's there he manages to get a hand on his wardrobe door, the handle in his fist, before he's hit with another wave. His eyes are blurred now, and no matter how hard or how long he blinks he can't clear it. He pulls as if to open the wardrobe, and there is a burst of orange light, an explosion of pain over his fist and he's ricocheted backwards, landing with a hard thump at the bottom of his bed. 

"What the--" he says, to himself because there is no one else here. 

Looking down he finds the entire surface of his hand is angry red and blistered. The handle of his wardrobe is twisted and deformed as if melted, but the light has dissipated. His room is dark once again. 

He still feels itchy and hot, dizzy and sick all at the same time and he can feel the static back in his fingertips beyond the harsh ache of the burn. 

He can taste a familiar charred and metallic flavour at the back of his tongue. It reminds him of pumpkin and old books, green tinted walls and an open fire. Sense memory of things he's trying to forget.

Something is pushing at him from the inside, tugging somewhere deep down in the back of his brain. He feels it like ice in his veins but heat on his skin and he reaches out for the wardrobe once again. 

There is a rush he can feel start in the centre of his chest, radiating outwards dagger sharp and boiling. It snakes it's way down his arm and he can feel his blistering palm alight with pain once again. He's hot, sweat beads on his forehead and drips down into his rapidly blurring vision. He tries to get to his feet, to take a step forward. 

If he can just reach the wardrobe… if he can just get his-- 

With a loud scream he feels the building heat in his palm break and there is once again a flash of that deep orange light. A bubble of it like lightning starting from the centre of his hand and shooting out. The wardrobe catches the brunt of it and the wooden door flickers into flame. 

He has barely a second to register what has happened before he's overcome with a dizziness much stronger than anything he's felt so far. The flames lick their way up towards the ceiling and Dan falls down… down towards the floor where his head lands with a resounding thump and his vision dims to pitch black. The fire carries on, and Dan passes out.

***

Dan wakes to the familiar American accent of his neighbour and an insistent poking on this shoulder. 

"Daniel," she's saying, "Are you dead? God help you if you are I swear--" 

"Uhh," he says, eloquently. 

"Thank fuck."

Dan opens his eyes and blinks up at her. "Ree?"

"What the hell happened?" Reena says, one hand in her pocket and the other frantically tugging a wavy strand of dark hair behind her ear. 

Dan tries to sit up, to collect himself, but he feels a spike of pain behind his eyes as he does and he drops his head back down to the carpet. 

"Shit," she says, "You look really fucked up."

"Hm," Dan agrees.

"Were you… was there a fire in your closet?" 

She looks over her shoulder, and Dan suddenly remembers what happened. 

"Yeah I-- candle."

She looks back at him, her mouth pinched tight and her eyes narrowed. "How many times have I told you to watch out for those?" she says. "Were you sleeping? Did you knock it over?" 

"Um--"

"Wait… never mind. Are you okay?"

Dan manages to shift, bending his body and sitting up against the end of his bed. Reena looks concerned as he moves but he knows she hates to seem like she has actual emotions outside of anger and sarcasm, so he doesn't say anything. He just waits for her face to smooth back out and for her to stop nervously twisting her nose ring through the hole in her nostril. 

"I'm fine," he says, slightly breathless from the exertion. "I burnt my hand putting the fire out is all."

Her eyes flick to his hand which he holds out like a red and blistered piece of proof to his story. 

"And then you… took a nap?"

"Passed out," Dan corrects her and watches her face twist again. "From the er… pain. I guess."

"Shit, Dan."

It's a testament to how concerned she is that she doesn't use his full name. She just does it because he refuses to use her full name. 

"Ree," he says, with only mild emphasis, "It's fine." 

"Yeah," she says, waving a hand in front of his face and pulling her mouth into a tight angry line again to replace the tug of concern. 

He wants to roll his eyes at her but his head is still pounding. 

"You gonna get that looked at, or what?" she says. "I don't think that's something I can help with."

"Why would you--" He stops, because Reena is half way through rolling her eyes. "Probably," he adds on the end, to appease her.

She levels him with another stare, displeased. It doesn't affect him much these days. He's lived next door to her for three years and he knows that while she's tough and hard on the outside it's only because she's really quite emotional on the inside. She's just better at hiding it than most.

But she doesn't fool him anymore. He's seen her go from crying over her ex-girlfriend, mascara streaks still on her cheeks to taking a deep breath while she built the wall back up. From ugly wracked sobs to a stone-faced 'well fuck her' in a matter of minutes. 

Dan knows she isn't really that strong, that most of it is for show, but he loves her for it anyway.

"I really think you should," she says. 

"Yeah," Dan nods. "I'll get it looked at, promise."

Reena sighs softly and repositions herself so that she's sat cross-legged on the carper opposite. 

"Are you really going to?"

"Um, yeah?" Dan says, "I said I would."

"Just because you say something doesn't mean you're going to do it," Reena says, "it's not like… look, just... Promise me? Don't do that thing where you get all jumpy about asking for help."

"I don't do that."

"Yeah," she laughs wryly, "you do."

Dan looks down at the carpet because he could swear her deep brown eyes are staring right into his head.

"I don't mean to be a complete jerk about this," she says, "I'm not. I just mean that you're not the best about looking after yourself sometimes."

"I can look after myself just fine," he argues.

"Yeah. I don't mean you're completely useless. You just have this… like, you're incapable of asking for help sometimes. Usually when you really need it. You don't have to do everything the hard way you know."

Dan bites down on his bottom lip and flexes the fingers on his injured hand. Pain radiates through his entire hand, skin throbbing. He thinks he sees a crackle of static again, threaded through the lines on him palm, and he quickly turns it over so she won't see. 

"You don't share," She says when he doesn't respond, "and I don't pry because people are allowed to have shit they don't talk about. I ain't asking questions. I just want you to be okay, and this is something you gotta take care of."

"I promise," he says. "I'll… get it looked at."

"By a professional," Reena prompts. "Go to the hospital."

Dan thinks that a doctor probably wouldn't know what to make of all of this. He can just imagine the look on their faces as he explains that he might have caught a bug that made him spontaneously set his wardrobe on fire. Oh and also, there's a strange static coming out of his skin and everything tastes like pumpkin, except actual pumpkin, and--

He needs a different kind of person to look at this one. 

It means going somewhere he promised himself he'd never go again. It means owning up to a part of himself that he has, until today, been pretty good at keeping a lid on. The thing he said goodbye to at seventeen years old and vowed never to return to. 

He looks up to meet Reena's dark insistent eyes and hopes she can't see all the way in to his soul, to the static and hidden thing he's keeping in there. 

"By a professional," he says with a sharp jerk of his head which approximates a nod. 

"Hospital?"

Dan takes a deep breath and wonders if she knows what she's asking him to do. But of course, she can't. She couldn't know what it means for him to have to go back there. 

He nods. For real this time.

"Do you want me to to come with you?"

"Err," Dan thinks of how her face might look if he did take her with him. He tries to contemplate how he'd tell her, how he'd explain it all. Which of course is impossible, not to mention that doing so would be breaking all kinds of rules. No, much better he goes by himself, gets it all checked out, does whatever he needs to do to make sure whatever happened doesn't happen again. "No thanks, I'll be fine."


	2. Chapter Two

Dan always forgets how perturbing it is to have someone apparate right in front of you, but that's exactly what the Welcome Witch does. 

"How can I help you?" she says, which is perfectly nice, if not a bit disturbing coming from someone who has just appeared right in front of you. 

"Uh--" 

He's already knocked off kilter having had to come through the stupid dilapidated shop window, after talking to a dummy of all things, and now he's standing in a very busy room full of people sporting ridiculous and horrific looking injuries, so he's not in the best form.

"Have you been affected by an engorgement charm on your tongue?" she asks, as if this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. "I have to advise that if this is a reaction to Weasley Wizard Wheezes Ton-Tongue Toffee, the effects are temporary and required no medical intervention." 

"Um--no toffee no, not my… err..." 

"You poor dear, perhaps a Babbling Curse?" 

"No," Dan manages. "It isn't a spell, I don't think-- I'm just…" 

He holds up his burned hand and then shrugs. She peers over the top of her spectacles, the beaded chain attached to them swinging about her ears. The glasses appear to be perched on her nose quite by themselves, perhaps hovering a few millimetres above and adjusting to her movements by some sort of charm, so Dan isn't really sure what the point of the chain is other than wondering if perhaps some muggle customs have found their way in to fashion.

"Hm," she hums, pondering. "How did this happen?" 

"I'm not… sure. Exactly." 

"It doesn't look like fiendfyre, or Dragon's flame…" 

"No, no. It was… me. The fire came from--"

"Accidental Spell Damage is on the first floor," she says, smiling and then lifting her wand as if to disapparate away again. 

"NO," he says, a touch too loud. No one turns around, except one gentleman in the corner with his left ear spelled to twice the size of his own head. "Sorry, I just-- no. I mean I think I'm sick. I didn't mean to cast anything. I haven't cast-- I'm not well." 

She regards him lightly, perhaps faintly amused, and tucks a single brown curl back behind her ear. The beaded glasses chain swings again.

"Well, Magical Bugs is on the second floor."

"Alright… well, um, thank you. I'll just…" 

"Elevators are that way," she says pointing with her wand. 

Dan looks over his shoulder in the direction she pointed and by the time he looks back, she's already disapparated. 

"Well," he says, to himself because what is strange in the muggle world doesn't even raise an eyebrow here. "Here we go again."

He hasn't seen or interacted with a witch or wizard since he was seventeen so while the sight of all of this isn't new, exactly, it isn't familiar in the same way it was back at school. 

In the lift there is a witch in red robes pushing a food cart. Dan's nostrils are assaulted with the smell of Pumpkin Pasties and Every Flavour Beans and he gets a sudden tug of nostalgia for the Hogwarts Express. Every September, stepping out onto a crowded platform 9 ¾, inhaling a lungful of train smoke and waiting for a new year to begin. 

It had been fun, at first. But it wore off. 

He steps out of the lift on the second floor and speaks to a Mediwitch who directs him to a small seating area with wooden chairs. More witches and wizards linger here, some with the telltale signs of Dragon Pox littering their skin, others without any visible signs to speak off but Dan knows to avoid them all the same. 

That's the problem with magic, he thinks, you can't always see it but it's always there waiting to do something horrible to you.

Once it's his turn Dan is directed to an examination room and sits on a long bed. There's a wooden cabinet filled with potions, some of which he recognises from class but some that probably require extra training to create. Healer training. 

He isn't waiting for too long before the door opens and a Mediwitch comes in. She has what is probably a bit too much blonde hair in large bouncy curls that fly everywhere. In a muggle hospital it would probably be against every health and safety and hygiene regulation there is to have that much hair on display, but here it probably doesn't matter as much. 

Dan has been to St. Mungos only once before, when he was around fifteen years old. He'd been here with his brother then, and he remembers his mum's worried face as he told her that he'd take care of him.

"Don't worry," he'd said. "I'll make sure he's okay. They'll figure out what's wrong." 

His mum had sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down on what Dan knew would probably have been something about what 'wrong' meant. In her eyes, the fact that his brother hadn't yet showed signs of having any magic at all was a good thing. 

He remembered the Healer who saw them that time. He was old and his eyes had drooping bags underneath them like he could fall asleep at any moment. He'd examined his little brother closely, peering in to his ears and up his nose and once, bizarrely, holding his hand up to his own ear as if listening for something. 

There had been a sad moment's silence after the diagnosis, and Dan watched his eleven year old brother's lip tremble and his eyes fill with tears before he blinked them away, sucked it all up. 

"Good," he'd said. "I don't want to go to that school anyway."

That had been the start of their separation. They never called it what it was, and Dan would never dream of using the word to describe him that they had. He seemed fine with the result and their mum had pulled him into a giant hug, a tense breath she'd been holding escaping her lungs. 

"It's okay now," she'd said, and looked over at Dan with a little less relief in her eyes. It wasn't okay for him, and it would continue to be less okay the more time went on. 

By the time he left Hogwarts, the school his brother wasn't permitted to enter because he had no magic of his own, he wanted nothing to do with it. Magic meant separation from his family, it meant feeling different and strange. He didn't fit in at school, he didn't fit in at home. He was nowhere, lost. He just wanted to be normal. 

"Should I mark confusion down as a symptom?" the Mediwitch says. 

Dan is pulled back from his memories and finds that she is now standing next to him. She has a slight gap between her two front teeth as she smiles at him. 

"Sorry?" 

"Hm, I've been trying to get your attention. You're at St. Mungo's hospital, you came here because you think you're unwell. If you're feeling confused I'm sure the Healer can--" 

"No," Dan interrupts, "I'm not confused. Sorry, I was just… thinking." 

"Alright," she nods, "that's good. You're Daniel… Howell?" 

She looks down at a piece of parchment she has in her hand. 

"Yes, that's me." 

"Good. the Healer will be with you in a moment. Do you need anything while you wait?" 

"No," Dan says, trying to smile back at her. "I'm fine." 

"Don't look so nervous. You've got Healer Lester, he's… well he'll fix you up a treat."

Dan just nods and agrees and lets her leave the room again in a cloud of all those blonde curls. As she's going through the door a Healer almost collides with her. He reaches out, steadying her as she swerves out of his way but stumbling himself. 

He all but falls into the room, his foot catching a wheeled trolley containing potion vials and other instruments Dan doesn't recognise, sending it spinning off in the opposite direction to collide with the wall. There is a sharp tinkle of glass and Dan can see a steady drip of purple-pink liquid sliding down the side of the trolley. 

"Oh… Merlin," the Healer says. "I'm sorry Lou, are you alright?" 

"I'm fine," the Mediwitch says with a laugh, "it's not the first time you've tumbled over yourself and I'm sure it won't be the last. Do you need me to clean that lot up before I go?" 

"No," the Healer says, running a hand through his dark hair to push it back up off his forehead. "I'll do it, it was my fault."

The Mediwitch leaves and the Healer seems to forget Dan is there entirely as he gets busy with clearing up the disturbed instrument trolley. He pulls a wand out of the pocket on his Healer's robe, and Dan can't take his eyes off it. 

It's a warm coloured wood, cherry maybe, and it fits perfectly in his slender hand, looking like an extension of it rather than something he's holding. He spells the potion bottle bits into the bin and then uses a vanishing spell to get rid of the spillage. It takes a matter of seconds to sort it all out, but he does it without vocalising the spells at all and Dan hasn't seen much of that at all so in spite of himself, he's captivated. 

The Healer finally turns around to face him with only a mild look of surprise at finding him there and Dan can't help the smile he gives in return. He's tall and lithe, looking just as awkward as he had when tripping over his own feet, but his eyes are an impossible blue-green-yellow combination that swirl all together. Dan wonders if that's magic too, a glamour or something.

"Hello," the Healer says, and his face is warm and wonderful as he smiles. "Um, Daniel?" 

Thank goodness for the parchment the Mediwitch had given him or Dan thinks he probably wouldn't have any idea who he is or why he's here. 

"Dan is fine." 

"Dan," he repeats, and then, "I'm Healer Lester. Or, well, Phil if you like. It seems unfair that I'm allowed to call you by your name but you can't call me by mine. That's a stupid rule, people should just call each other by their names. You don't call anyone else by their job titles. Except Aurors, I suppose. Or professors… in fact there are quite a few aren't there? Nevermind. I'm Phil, anyway."

Dan doesn't know what to make of him. He's a little strange, clumsy and awkward, and yet Dan doesn't mind when the Healer - Phil - moves towards him, the wand still sitting in his hand like it always belongs there.

"It says here you're not feeling well?" Phil says.

Dan looks down at his hand and flexes his fingers a little. They still hurt, the burn is still raw and angry, the surface shiney and shrivelled where it isn't blistered. But he doesn't feel as _ill_ anymore. There is no static in the lines of his palm, no hot flushes or electric-like pain. Maybe he isn't ill, maybe whatever it was that was wrong with him is gone now. 

"I… was." 

"You were?" the Healer says, "but you're not anymore?"

Dan licks his bottom lip and shrugs. "I don't know, I guess."

Phil cocks his head a fraction to the right and looks down where Dan's hand is resting on top of his knee. "And your hand," he says, "how did you get that burn?"

"I don't really know that either."

"O...kay."

Phil is a good Healer, if he's going by the standards for muggle doctors. He's being patient and kind with Dan even though he's making little to no sense at all, and he's still looking at him with a friendly, welcoming smile. 

"I was feeling really ill the past couple of days. I had a fever and everything ached. At first I thought it was flu… you know, just the muggle variety because I'm half-blood, but then I--" he stops. Phil is absentmindedly tapping his wand against his thigh and every now and again a blue-white spark erupts from the end of it. It's that hazy-electric kind of light and Dan remembers the burst of orange that seemed to come from the centre of his palm. "I set my wardrobe on fire. And then I fainted."

"Um-- On purpose?" Phil says. 

"No. It was… I mean I guess I didn't know it at the time for sure but it was… magic. Of some kind." 

"If you cast a spell that backfired or was done incorrectly, Spell damage is down on floor--" 

"No. I didn't cast a spell, I don't cast spells." 

"You don't cast spells?" 

Dan inhales through his nose and holds it for half a second. "No."

"It doesn't have to be big magic to be considered a spell," Phil says, summoning a chair over to drop at his feet. It's badly aimed and he nearly sends it crashing in to his own shins before he can sit on it, but he manages. The wordless magic still impresses Dan just a little, even if it does have a clumsy outcome. "I mean, even a levitation spell can do the trick if done incorrectly. In fact, I'm sure you've heard tales at Hogwarts of students managing to blow things up with any spell at all. Flitwick has some fantastic stories about one boy in particular who--"

"No," Dan interrupts him again. Phil, he is finding, has a tendency to ramble on and on when he gets stuck on a subject. Dan needs him to listen, because whatever the orange light was, whatever had caused magic to burst out of his hand like that and cause a fire without any warning at all, he needs to make sure it isn't going to repeat itself. "I wasn't trying to perform magic, I haven't performed any magic at all for the best part of five years."

"What, nothing?"

"No."

"Why?"

Phil has his hand propped under his chin now as if genuinely interested. He's all but abandoned any professionalism at this point and Dan doesn't really like how much he's prying, but something about the swirl of those blue-green-yellow eyes that just _have_ to be a glamour makes him want to tell this man all of his darkest secrets. 

"I just don't," he says, "I… I just don't." 

Okay, maybe not all of his secrets. 

Phil sits and looks at him for a moment. His chin is still resting on his hand and he's leaning almost close enough to Dan's knee that he can feel some of the warmth from his body. 

"Alright," Phil says, finally, his voice low and reverent. It makes Dan's chest feel warm. 

Dan doesn't know what to say when Phil doesn't immediately move the conversation on. He would try to explain what happened if he could, but all he knows is that one minute he felt unwell and then he didn't. Somewhere in the middle he set his wardrobe on fire and passed out. 

He doesn't know anything more than that. 

"So," Phil says, suddenly on his feet and moving the chair out of the way. It's such a sudden flurry of movement that Dan is sure Phil is going to find a way to trip over again and braces for the fall. It doesn't come. Phil is unstable and his legs seem to operate in a way that he doesn't actually intend them to, but he's surprisingly nimble. "Let me get this straight. You don't do any magic at all… for whatever reason. You were feeling unwell with a fever and aches and pain and then you spontaneously set your wardrobe on fire. Fainted, and then felt better. Apart from a quite severe burn to your hand we can only attribute to the fire."

"Hm," Dan nods, "That's about the size of it, yeah."

"Interesting."

Phil's eyes are trained on him. They look, it occurs to him, like a muted Van-Gogh sky. A pastel-hued starry night staring deeply into his soul. He feels pinned by his gaze, rooted to the spot as Phil's eyes focus in on him. 

"Do you… um, does that sound like something you've heard of, then?" 

"Oh," Phil says, breaking out of his stare finally and walking over to the potion cabinet with a dismissive wave of his hand. "No. I've absolutely no idea what could have caused you to spontaneously set your wardrobe on fire. Or why you're feeling unwell."

"O...Kay."

"But it's interesting," he says, head in the cabinet now, "I mean it's crazy isn't it? I don't know of anything that would cause someone to produce magic when they don't want to. It's unheard of. And you don't- produce magic that is. Ever. For whatever reason. So yeah, you're really interesting."

He turns around with a vial in his hand and his eyes go wide, his mouth parting so Dan can see the soft pink of his tongue. 

"Your problem, I mean," Phil clarifies, hastily. "Your problem is interesting."

"Um, thank you?" Dan says, with a slight chuckle because Phil's face is just too precious. "I think."

Phil returns his laughter with some of his own and it sounds warm and heartfelt. It makes Dan realise how little time he spends in the company of people he can laugh with. Reena, maybe, although while they often share a sardonic laugh, they're both much too careful of their emotions to really engage in much levity. Work is definitely a laugh-free zone. Stuffy men in grey suits leaning over piles of paper and out-of-date computers. Dan usually just put in his earphones and transcribes case notes, all the while trying to avoid any conversation with them at all if he can help it. Except Janet at the desk next to him, she's alright.

So Phil laughing, them laughing together, isn't something he gets to experience very often. 

“What I can help you with,” Phil says coming back over to him, “is that burn. Hand out, please.” 

Dan holds his hand out, palm up, and Phil places his own hand underneath it to hold it steady. His skin is soft, a little cooler than Dan’s but that’s probably the lingering fever. Phil gently uncorks the vial in his other hand with a graceful flick of his thumb and tips the liquid onto Dan's palm. 

Immediately, Dan beings to feel the soothing effects of it. Phil abandons the empty vial on the bed next to Dan’s thigh and uses his fingertips to massage the cool silver-blue liquid into his injured hand. His hands are so gentle, movements light and feathery, and Dan feels goosebumps erupt on his arms at the sensation. 

“Better?” Phil asks after a few moments, and Dan realises they’ve been completely silent and still the entire time. It might be the longest time Phil has been quiet and still since he came in the room. 

Dan is surprised that his injury feels much better indeed. He nods and flexes his newly healed fingers. 

“Well,” Phil says, moving away and placing the vial back in the cabinet. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do much about the spontaneous fire-setting. I promise I’ll keep looking in to it, but for now the only thing I can offer is to advise you to come back if you experience any symptoms. Perhaps it was a one-time event.” 

“Alright,” Dan says, hoping that he’s right. 

Phil is absentmindedly tapping his wand against his thigh again and Dan catches a few sparks in the corner of his eye. Phil must notice he’s doing it because he glances down at it, stills his hand, and turns back to face Dan. 

“Is that it?” Dan asks. 

“Yes,” Phil says, his lips pulled into a small pout, like he’s unsatisfied with the fact that he can’t help any more than he has. 

“My hand feels better,” Dan reminds him. 

“I’m glad.”

Phil lets him go and Dan makes his way back out of the hospital the way he came in. The skin of his palm feels like nothing ever happened so he hopes that Phil is right, and that this has just been a one-off event that he can put behind him.


	3. Chapter Three

The feeling of being well again lasts for a few days, but by the third day he’s feeling hot and achy again. He ask sto work from home again and while his boss isn’t entirely happy about it, he can’t bring himself to care. 

He’s on the couch with his laptop and the words are swimming on the page, his hands feel like there’s a layer of static back on his palms and while he’s trying to work, he can feel a rising tide of panic in the back of his mind about what happened the last time he felt like this. 

His blanket is discarded next to him and he’s stripped down to his t-shirt. He wants to get up and open a window, possibly sit in the chair so that the breeze can flutter over the back of his neck and cool his feverish skin, but he can’t imagine moving. 

He’s scared, he doesn’t want to think about what this could be or worry that it’s something he needs to go back to St. Mungos for. The Healers hadn’t been able to tell him what it was, or why it would be happening, so he’s hoping, foolishly, that it might just be some lingering side effects of last time. 

Or maybe this time he really does have flu and it has nothing to do with spontaneous flames and a rush of magic in his veins.

The knock on his door is unexpected, but not unwelcome. Maybe Reena can bring him some food, or do something wildly out of character like baby him a little while he’s feeling so sorry for himself. 

“Come in,” he yells, his voice a bit hoarse but too tired and ill to get up and actually answer the door. 

It isn’t Reena. 

In his doorway is Phil, the Healer from St. Mungo's, standing with his hands in the pockets of some plain black jeans, thankfully not wearing his Healer robes. Dan doesn’t know what the reactions of his neighbours would be if Phil had turned up like that. He looks strange, but it's probably not just the clothes.

It’s jarring to see Phil here in his space. So far he’s managed to keep magic and everything that went with it and the way his life is now, completely separate. So that Phil would turn up here, unannounced and unwanted, is a shock to say the least. 

“Phil.” Maybe he’s delirious, maybe it’s finally happened, that whatever magical virus or bug he’s picked up that makes him set fire to his furniture has also made him hallucinate the cute healer from before. "Healer Phil.” 

“Yes,” Phil says, rocking on his heels, “that’s me. I am… him.”

He grins sheepishly, a tinge of colour on his cheeks that Dan thinks is adorable. 

“Sorry,” Phil continues, “should I have owled to say I was coming?”

Dan looks over at his window. There hasn’t been an owl or any kind of magical communication in his life since he moved here. Since before that too. 

“No,” Dan says, and means that he probably wouldn’t have thought to let the owl in anyway, wouldn’t have noticed the slow quiet tap of its beak on the glass. “That’s… fine.”

“You don’t look good,” Phil says. 

Dan attempts a weak smile back at him, deflecting. “Thanks mate, you really know how to charm a guy.”

“If I was trying to charm you,” Phil says, shaking himself and closing the door behind him finally, “you’d know it.”

Dan’s brain is too tired to work that one out. He feels lethargic and sick and he closes his eyes just for a second while a wave of nausea runs through his stomach. 

“Feverish?” Phil asks.

“Is it that obvious?”

He realises he's being rude, that the ache in his bones and the thud in his head is making him forget his manners. He beckons Phil over and points to the armchair by the window, inviting him in, the least he can do is try to be hospitable

“Not that I’m not happy to see you,” Dan says, finding how true that actually is, “but what are you doing here? I didn’t know St. Mungos did house calls.”

“They don’t. Well, actually, they probably do. But that’s not why I’m here.” 

“Good,” Dan croaks, “because I didn’t ask for one.”

“Do you want some tea?”

Dan blinks at him. Phil is sat in his chair, just as comfy as you like, and now he’s offering Dan tea in his own home. He wants to laugh, ridiculously, at how at home Phil has made himself when Dan still feels like he doesn’t really fit. 

He definitely doesn’t feel like Phil fits. 

"I'll get tea," he says, when Dan doesn't answer. 

He stands up, almost gracefully except that he stumbles slightly. Dan snorts a laugh but Phil stoically ignores him. Phil stalks across to his tiny kitchen, in the corner of his living space, and Dan hears cupboards opening and closing. 

"Above the microwave," Dan says. 

Silence. 

Dan turns on the couch, looking over the back of it to where Phil is paused in front of the counter with a creased line between his brows. He reaches in to the back pocket of those black jeans and Dan follows the movement with his eyes before he realises that's more than a little uncalled for. Phil pulls out his wand and Dan hears a whispered _accio mug_ and a cupboard door opens all on its own, a mug dancing in the air in silence, right into Phil's outstretched hand. 

Dan gasps, and Phil turns to look at him. 

"What? Are you okay?"

"No. I mean yes, I'm fine, I just…" he waves a hand unhelpfully in Phil's direction, hoping he can pick up on what he means. 

"Wrong mug?" 

"No. I was just…" Dan pauses to take a breath and turn back around on the couch so he can get comfortable. His palms sting, but his vision is too blurry to tell if there is static on them. His skin feels hot and tight, stretched over his bones as if it no longer fits. "The magic. I'm not used to seeing it."

He doesn't know what Phil must think of him. Phil who can't make tea without using magic, who is so ingrained in the wizarding world that he doesn't even know what a microwave is. It fits easy on Phil, as it does on most wizards probably, the ease with which he uses magic. The casual flick of his wand against his thigh, held in delicate fingers, sitting flush and right on his palm. 

It had never felt like that to Dan, it had always rubbed the wrong way, like trying to fit himself into a space he didn't fit. The wrong piece of the jigsaw. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth every time, he can see the flash of disappointment in his mum's eyes, hear her arguing with his dad about him going to Hogwarts at all. 

His brother's envious eyes at the train station as Dan disappeared through a wall, off to places he'd never get to go.

"Sorry," he hears Phil say, and then, "Are you okay? Dan?"

Dan shivers, a flush of cold over his feverish skin as another wave of tense ache runs through his muscles. Phil makes a concerned noise and Dan hears the click as he places the mug down on the counter. 

Phil is stood next to the couch so quickly that Dan could swear he'd apparated there. But there was no familiar crack accompanying the movement, so it's possible Dan just isn't with it enough to really know what is going on. 

He feels sick, dizzy and tense in the way that he had before. He wants to scream, to feel the release of something, the blinding banging on the inside of his skull.

Phil presses a cool hand against Dan's forehead in a move that feels more muggle than anything magic, but it's pleasant, the coldness of it, and it soothes Dan just a little bit. 

"I think I worked out what might be wrong," Phil says, his voice low and deep enough to cut through Dan's headache without causing him further pain. 

"Hm," Dan says, his head lolling back against the armrest. "What's that?"

The words form in his head, he knows he means to say them but somehow they get lost on the way out and what actually ends up coming out of his mouth is a garbled groan. 

"Dan?" Phil is saying, his face swimming. "Dan, I think I need to do something to make it stop, before it gets any worse. It's magic. I need to do magic to… it's… it's pretty intense magic. Can I? Can I try? Do you give me permission?" 

The crackle of Dan's own magic fizzes on his palms and Dan tries to lift them, to see if the haze of static is visible again. He hurts, the aches in his bones turned to pain, and he wants to curl into a ball. The flashes of greenish-blue spark behind his eyelids again, just like last time, and Dan nods. 

He hasn't been around the wizarding community in so long. He's tried to stay away, to distance himself from all of it, but it's found him. Creeped up on him in the night and now a Healer is in his living room. He wants this to be over, he wants to go back to his boring life and his boring job, he wants nothing to do with magic whatsoever, and if it takes a bit more magic to make that happen, then so be it.

"Anything," he tries to say, "make it stop." 

"I need permission," Phil says, "I need you to tell me I can."

Dan groans again, trying to turn his head towards Phil. Why is he making Dan talk, can't he see he's in pain? 

"Yes," he gets out, his teeth grinding together to keep the pain at bay, to stop himself screaming. "Yes, you… ugh… you have p-permission."

Phil shifts next to him, dropping to kneel next to the couch. The hand that Dan hadn't realised was still pressed to his forehead is taken away, and he slips his hand into Dan's, pressing his cool palm against the stingy, itchy expanse of Dan's. 

His hands are soft, and they alone are soothing, but Phil's grip is firm as he reaches for Dan's other hand. He isn't holding his wand, whatever Phil is about to do is apparently wandless magic. This isn't the moment to be impressed by that, Dan thinks amidst his pain, but he is. 

There is a warm gust of air on Dan's cheek as Phil takes a steading breath.

"Ready?" he whispers.

Dan hums in response, unable to form words. He can feel the static building, the same dizzy rush of magic pressing up inside him, heat and pain and power all growing beneath his skin. It's going to happen again, Dan can feel the fire raging through him, ready to burst.

" _Eximius_ " Phil says, loudly, the word crackling with magic, with the rumble of Phil's own voice. 

There is a ripping sensation, as if a vacuum is imploding on his palms, fire and magic shooting out of him but going nowhere. Dan's eyes fly open to see a twisted look of pain on Phil's face, where his knuckles have gone white where he's gripping at Dan's hands. 

Dan holds fast, the draining feeling going on and on, way past the point of the immediate rush of magic, reaching down into him as if pulling the very depths of anything waiting. The blue-green flashes he sees behind his eyes hovers in an aura around their joined fists, growing brighter and brighter.

As the final tug of magic on Dan's hands send Phil flying backwards, landing on his back at the foot of the sofa, their hands parted, orange light fills the room, a flash of greenish-blue, a flare of purple. Blinding, for an instant, and Dan can feel the magic swirl around him, hot and dizzying, lifting the curls in his hair. 

It's like a fresh bucket of water dumped on his head, finally cool and free of the pain and the static. He scrambles up, finding Phil on his back, coming up onto his elbow. His cheeks are pink, his hair is a riotous mess, as his own must be, he looks tired, like he's run a marathon. 

"What," Dan says, now that he knows Phil is okay, "Was that?"


	4. Chapter Four

Dan, feeling much better, takes it upon himself to make the tea. He settles Phil on the couch, feeling how warm he is as he takes one of his shoulders in each hand and eases him down into the cushions. 

"Are you okay?" he says. 

"Yeah," Phil nods, running a hand through his hair to sweep it back off his forehead. "Just… I don't know. Kind of tired, but also kind of keyed up." 

Dan passes him the tea once it's made. He manages it without magic the same way he's always done. Phil turns at the sound of the kettle, mildly perplexed, before shrugging slightly, as if concluding it must be a muggle thing. 

Dan wonders if Phil would have heated the water on the stove, or god forbid his fireplace, or maybe he would just have stuck his wand in the mug and spelled it warm. 

Phil's hand accepts the warm mug gratefully but instead of taking a sip he cradles it to his chest, both hands pressed to the warm ceramic. 

"Are you sure you're okay?" Dan asks. 

Phil nods, "I'm fine. But… are you? You look better. I should check—" 

Phil makes as if to get up but Dan shakes his head and holds up a steadying hand.

"Stop," he says. "Just finish your tea. I'm fine, I don't need your Healer services right now."

"What do you need me for then?" Phil says, his blue eyes peering from under his lashes across the rim of a steaming mug. 

He could swear Phil is smirking at him. 

"I need for you to shut up and drink your tea," Dan counters. "You've just been through… whatever the hell that was."

"That was a de-pressurisation," Phil says. 

Dan blinks at him, sipping his tea. "Am I expected to know what that means?" 

"No, um," Phil lifts his legs up, sitting cross legged on his couch so that he looks like an overgrown child. He has some of that whimsy, Dan thinks, some childlike playfulness. "It's… well I told you, I think I figured out what made your wardrobe all… on fire." 

"Care to elaborate?" 

Phil's eyes narrow, shooting him a look that can only be described as unimpressed. Dan doesn't know why he's being so snarky, why either of them are. It's the magic, probably, it rubs him up the wrong way. 

Phil looks back at him, considering. He takes a breath and seems to shrug away whatever it was he might have said in rebuttal, and pulls his legs up onto the couch so that he had them crossed in front of him. 

He looks small, like a child, clutching his hot drink in two hands and blinking over the rim of it. 

"You've heard of the Statute of Secrecy," he says, finally.

"Of course," Dan nods, with only the merest hint of indignation, "I'm muggle-born."

If Phil is shocked that Dan shared that information so freely, he doesn't show it. Sometimes people are funny about that kind of thing, or at least they had been at school. Dan knows the stories, the history. He'd listened to Binns voice, usually monotone and boring, get heightened and full of deep sincerity when he talked about a war, and a man who'd had big opinions about people like Dan, people born to Muggle families. 

Dan knows that being Muggle-born doesn't make him any less of a Wizard, he doesn't think any of the people he went to school with that came from Muggle families are any different from those that came from Wizarding ones, but he can't pretend it's made things exactly easy for him.

"It's..." Phil clears his throat, "Yeah."

"I just mean, I was told about how important it was that I didn't use magic before I was seventeen and--" 

"Oh," phil says, interrupting him. "Yeah, it's that, but it covers like, the use of magic in front of muggles in general."

"What, like, any of them?"

"Well, allowances are made," Phil says, shifting in his seat to put his hot drink down, even though he can't possibly be done with it. "For like, you know, families. And the... the Muggle minister." 

"The Prime Minister," Dan says. 

"Yeah," Phil nods. "The Prime Minister needs to know about magic. But in general, the statute means Wizarding folk shouldn't use magic in front of Muggles."

Dan isn't sure he really knew that before now. Obviously he knew it was important not to use magic in front of Muggles, and he has absolutely no intention of doing that - or using magic at all really - but he didn't know there was anything as finite as a _law_ about it. 

Dan suddenly sucks in a breath and he can feel his heart pick up a little bit in his chest. 

"When I set my wardrobe on fire," he says, quietly, "my neighbour came round afterwards." 

"Wow," Phil says, "What did she say?" 

"Uh, I think I told her I knocked a candle over. Or something. But it was magic, right? Doesn't that violate the statue of secrecy?"

Phil shakes his head, quiff shaking along with it giving him a jaunty air.

"No," he says, "She only saw the aftermath. Muggles can see that. Besides, if you had violated it, Aurors would have been on you so fast. I think you're safe."

Dan feels the relief flood through him. He unfurls his hand from where it is balled into a fist on the arm of the chair. 

"So what does the statute have do with it then?" 

"Well," Phil says, a touch too loud, "The statue hasn't always been in effect, obviously. Laws have to be made at some point. It's really really old, though. It came into effect in..." 

Phil pauses, humming a little as if trying to think of the date. 

"Sixteen Ninety Two," he says, triumphantly. 

"Binns would be so proud," Dan says. 

Phil does look pleased with himself for having remembered. Dan is once again struck by how adorable he is, his tongue pokes into the corner of his mouth as he giggles and Dan swallows down his own smile in return. 

It seems strange that he and Phil could've gone to the same school. He doesn't remember him, though he'd be hard pressed to remember anyone given how little he really interacted with anyone at Hogwarts. He kept his head down, he got on with his lessons as best he could. He didn't make many friends. 

"Anyway, the reasons this is all… you know, relevant, is because of what happened around the time it was passed."

Dan nods, gesturing for him to continue. 

"People were scared. There were witch hunts happening, which is the whole reason for the Statute in the first place, and some people thought it might be best to stop doing magic altogether."

Dan puts his bottom lip between his teeth and bites down. It's starting to feel relevant now.

"Are you okay?" Phil asks. "You've gone a little pale." 

"I'm fine. Totally chill. Go on, what happened when they stopped doing magic?"

"Well, remember how when you were a kid and you first presented with magic?" 

Dan nods. He does remember, he'd only been nine. It was quite early to present with magic, or so he's been told, especially for a muggle-born. He remembers a lot of commotion, the fear in his mum's eyes as she gripped his frightened, four-year-old brother, arms around his head, as if to shield him from whatever it was Dan was. 

Someone from Hogwarts had turned up to explain it all, but that hadn't done anything to ease the fear in her eyes. He's used to it now. It never really went away.

"I remember," Dan says, because Phil is still looking at him like he's liable to go off again at any moment. 

He's not though, he feels oddly calm in that department. Whatever it was Phil did must have helped. 

"Me too," Phil says, "I was eleven, I was supposed to be starting Hogwarts that year and I still hadn't had any inkling of being able to use magic. My mum said it would happen, that everyone grows at their own pace, but I remember being super afraid I'd be a squib."

Dan can't relate to that at all.

_I wish I didn't have magic at all_ Dan wants to say, but it feels like giving too much of himself away, and it's not like Phil would understand it. Phil, who twirls his wand around his fingers like it's a part of him, who doesn't know how to use a kettle without magic. 

"But when I did present I blew all of the kitchen cupboard doors open at the same time because we'd run out of cereal. So, there's that." Phil is smiling at the memory, a joyful laugh threaded through his every word like it's fond thing, something humorous to recall. 

"I… I blew up my brother's train set," Dan confesses. "He wouldn't stop crashing two of them together and making loads of noise and I was trying to play my Gameboy and…" his face feels hot with shame, and he can't look Phil directly in the eyes. 

"Strong emotions," Phil says, "that's the whole thing."

Dan is pleasantly surprised to find that Phil doesn't sound judgmental. He hasn't picked up on how awful it was for him to do that to his little brother, how scary it was for a muggle to suddenly wield that kind of power. Phil has a magical family, when he was stood in a kitchen with open cabinets his mum had probably hugged him and smiled at how wonderful it was that he'd be able to go to Hogwarts after all. Their experiences were very different. 

"At least you got there eventually," Dan says, "Hogwarts." 

"Very nearly didn't. The battle was that year, and Mum had already pulled Martyn out of school ages before. They didn't much like wizarding families who didn't want to join in with… you know." Phil shrugs, but he doesn't sound the way he usually does. Dan can tell he's trying to trivialise it, but maybe it was just as frightening to him around that time as it had been for Dan discovering he had magic. "Blood traitors, they called us."

The war had left its mark. Dan hadn't been old enough to see any of it, and it isn't like he would have anyway, but he can tell it still sits with Phil a little bit. How it nearly took away the one thing he wanted more than anything. How it threatened his family. 

It was still a part of Hogwarts, repaired bricks never sitting quite right with the original ones. It creaked and settled in the night, still getting acquainted with itself even years later. Remembering how to be what it once was. 

"It worked out in the end," Phil says, and his voice has jumped back up to its happy lilt. The same odd yet charming grin back on his face. "They opened the school again in the September."

There's something to be said about the persistence of it. Re-building over the summer, putting back together the lives that were lost and objects that were broken, continuing on with the next school year even as the memories still lingered. 

Four year later, in Dan's first year, the memories were still there, but it was no longer as painful as it had been. It was a lesson, they said, in how there are some things more powerful than dark magic.

"Where was I?" Phil says, "I feel like we got sidetracked." 

"Magic," Dan says, quickly. "Er, I mean, presenting with magic."

"Right," Phil nods, "Yeah, it's a bit like that. When you first present it's because the magic has all built up in you and then a strong emotion makes it burst forth. So, like, when they first put the statute in place and people got scared, when they stopped using magic…"

Dan feels hot again, biting down on his lip. "They thought it was safer," he says.

"Except," Phil unfolds his legs and shifts so he's sat on the edge of the sofa, turned to face Dan. "It isn't. It isn't safer at all. Magic demands to be used, Dan."

Dan blinks at him, searching for the words to convey how that makes him feel. Thinking of magic as a great malevolent force that enacts itself whether the user wants it to or not doesn't feel great at all. He feels sick, twisted, the whole thing just screams of being unfair in all the worst ways. 

"I did a bit of a reading after you came to see me," Phil says, "and while there isn't much about it these days, there is the odd case of witches or wizards who Obliviated themselves to leave their life behind and then find out they can't keep the magic at bay. But those are usually people who used magic routinely up to that point, so it's sort of… ingrained. Like a nervous tick, I suppose."

Dan thinks of Phil tapping his wand against his thigh, sparks flying. "Hm."

"But the older books, the ones from just after the statute, they have more accounts that sound like your situation. People who don't use magic for much longer. They called it Wandlack Pressure."

"Pressure?" Dan says. "Kind of like a hot, feverish… thing. Under your skin?" 

"Yeah," Phil nods, just a bit pleased to have his theory proven right. "If someone doesn't use magic for a long time… it builds up. It kind of, gets to a point where the pressure is too much and then it—"

"Bursts out," Dan says, knowingly.

"Sets a wardrobe on fire, for instance," Phil replies.

Dan's body folds under the weight of that information. He slumps down against the back of the chair, shoulders hunching. 

"Shit."

"Are you— You don't look happy."

"Why would I be happy?" Dan asks, "You just told me that it isn't something that can be fixed. Magic demands to be used, you said. Fuck."

Dan has a hand in his hair, tugging slightly sending a prickle of pain across his scalp. 

"It isn't all that bad," Phil says, "It's just… well, it's just magic."

Dan shakes his head but he doesn't offer any words to convey his thoughts about that. It isn't _just_ magic to him. Magic isn't _just_ anything. It's terrifying, alienating, and he wants nothing to do with it. 

"What do I do?" Dan says instead, spoken small and quietly into the fabric of his shirt, the scent of his own body warm and damp where he'd been feverish. 

"I think if you just used a bit of magic, just every now and again, it would probably keep it at bay. Maybe just some levitation around the house? That might even make your life easier."

Phil smiles at him. It's a nice smile, and Dan wants to keep him smiling.

"Yeah," he says, "I'll try."


	5. Chapter Five

After Phil leaves his flat, Dan feels like he's at a loose end. It's not that he's used to that much company, it's just that Phil is kind of _good_ company and he hadn't talked about being a kid, or magic, or any of that in a long time. 

Even though they have very different experiences with it, and even though Phil can't possibly hope to understand everything about him, Dan misses how liberating it had felt to talk about it even just a little bit. 

His wardrobe handle is still twisted, morphed into a peculiar shape with the heat of the fire, and there are scorch marks on the wood. He stands in front of it, looking at himself in a mirror that has a bubbled pattern around the edge now, and noting how pale he looks. He's got some colour back in his cheeks now that he's feeling better, but he still looks drawn and tired. 

There's a box in the bottom of his wardrobe, right at the back. It's a black shoe box, nothing fancy at all, and it mostly contains scraps of things he wants to keep but isn't bothered about looking at very often.

His school scarf is folded on top, green and silver stripes still as colourful as they ever were. he picks it up to feel the soft wool in his hands and peels back the to layer of it. 

In its folds, he finds what he is looking for. 

The wand is a dark wood, a rich black ebony, reminding him of the piano in his mum's dining room. Almost the exact same shade. 

It thrums with expectant energy, and Dan swears he can feel a phantom vibration, even through the thick layers of his scarf. 

He hasn't looked at this wand in years. He hasn't touched it, felt that rush of vibrancy as it touches his skin. He's thinking about it now, wondering if it would be so hard to just place it between him fingers. Levitate his washing into the basket maybe, mutter a quiet _lumos_ and have light flood the dark recesses of the cupboard. Illuminate his secrets. 

He feels a nostalgic tug backwards in time. To standing in Ollivanders and feeling that rush of magic for the first time. That, in turn, makes him think of his mum. 

He's ten, and his brother is five. They're sat on the stairs as loud voices echo around the kitchen below. There is a twinkle of breaking china and Dan takes his brother by the hand, pulling him back up to their bedrooms. 

"Its okay," he'd said. "Everything is going to be alright."

It wasn't fine, and Dan probably knew it wasn't going to be, but at ten he'd felt like it was his job to lie about things like that. He wanted to make it better. His brother had smiled at him like those five short years of experience on him were enough to give him all the answers. Like he could trust his big brother to know it would be okay.

He's eleven, and his brother is scared of him now. His mum shouts loudly down the phone and he knows his dad is on the other end. He tucks his wand away until school starts, and keeps everything magical out of sight in every summer holiday after that. 

The magical part of himself has been in the back of a cupboard for as long as he can remember. Out of sight where it can't hurt anyone, where it can't make his brother look at him with wide fearful eyes, and his mum just look sad. 

And that's where it needs to stay. 

He places the wand back in the scarf and in the box, shoves it deep into the back of the wardrobe under a pile of shoes he no longer wears. 

He tries to forget.

A week later and Dan is back at work like nothing ever happened. Janet, the older woman who works at the desk beside his and never from home, gives him a tight, polite smile as he sits down at his desk on Monday morning. 

"Are you feeling better?" she asks, not quite making his eye. 

"Yeah, all better," he says, "thanks."

"Just as long as you're not going to give me anything."

She sniffs, and pushes a colourful ceramic bowl filled with boiled sweets over to him with the back of her index finger. He chuckles at her, and takes a bright green one that he knows from experience tastes like sour apple.

He is feeling better. For the most part, anyway. He's tired today, a little stiff, but that is only because he stayed up too late last night playing video games and then fell asleep on the sofa.

He back at work, but whatever Phil did wasn't enough to make him a functional adult.

"I think it was just a bug," Dan says, "you won't catch anything."

Janet doesn't say anything, but she doesn't have to. Dan settles in to his work day with the flavour of sour apple on his tongue.

He transcribes a stack of case notes scrawled on lined paper or pro formas, some audio ramblings from the partners that need to be made available digitally on an official document, and one scruffy piece of information on the back of a hotel napkin. To think, at one point in his life Dan had thought being a lawyer meant you had your shit together, but going by the stuff he sees here, that mustn't be the case. 

He doesn't get through as much as he would if he was at home. The general din of noise and distraction of people in the office makes him feel restless and unproductive. He makes sure to pack case files and sign them out to transcribe from home by the end of the week. 

He should probably put in a bit of an appearance in the office though, if just to remind his boss that he exists, to keep paying him. 

He's bone tired by the end of the day, weary as he pulls on his coat and loops his earphones around his neck, ready to press play on something that will melt the day away. 

His head is hurting, and he feels a little dizzy from standing up too quickly but he gets it together enough, resting his hands on the back of his chair, to summon words.

"See you tomorrow Janet," he says as he leaves. She'll be here late, she works four days out of five but longer days. Dan can't imagine spending any longer here than the eight hours he has to.

"Goodbye Daniel," she still doesn't look up from her computer. 

He trudges off in the direction of the lift, overheated in his coat from the heating in the office. A headache pounds at his temples and he's got a sinking sensation in his stomach.

He presses the button for the lift again, tapping it impatiently. He can feel a spread of heat down the back of his neck, and he can't be sure, but he gets the panicked impression that he needs to leave. Fast. 

Next to him, a guy who works across the office approaches to wait for the lift. 

"Hey man, you okay?" 

Dan looks at him, his stomach rolling. 

"Yeah I'm…" he looks down at the hand that he'd been waving in a dismissive gesture meant to indicate how fine he was, and spots the telltale peach static collected in his life line. "I'm gonna take the stairs."

The door to the stairs is heavy and he is out of breath by the time he's pulled it open and fled down the first flight. He has to pause on the next landing, leaning in the corner next to the fire extinguisher and rubbing his hands on his trousers.

"Go away," he whispers, "go away go away go away."

His vision swims again, the cream walls merging together with the black banister, a muddy grey haze filling his view. He breathes, sorting through his muddled thoughts to try and plan what it is he needs to do. 

Clearly he needs to get out of this building as fast as he can. He can only imagine the havoc he could cause if someone sees him, it's not like you can really explain a web of static covering your hands and a sudden fever.

He can feel it for what it is this time. A pressure under his skin, a buildup of restless, unsettled magic, neglected and unused. 

Get downstairs, he thinks, he just needs to get down the stairs and then he can call an Uber and get home. 

His first step towards the next flight of stairs sends a wave of nausea spiralling through him, and he still can't clear the blurry film across his eyes. He puts a hand on the banister and there is a flash of familiar amber sparks, the room temporarily bathed in orange. 

"Shit," he swears, and everything feels hopeless. 

There's no getting out of this, he realises. It's too far gone, and too much pressure.

He thinks about calling someone. He reaches for his phone with aching arms, and eyes that can barely see. Until he realises he has no one to call. 

"Hey," comes a voice from above him. "Are you alright? You didn't look—"

It's the guy from the lift. Why is he here? Why has he followed Dan into this dark stairwell. 

"Go away," Dan says, his voice hoarse, cracked around the pressure in his throat. It pushes its way up, the magic building in him, forcing its way out. 

"I came you check because you don't look like you're well mate, I should get a first aider. Or an ambulance?"

"M'fine," Dan tries to say, but all that comes out is a garbled noise of anguish.

The guy's footsteps approach behind him, and Dan's only thought is that he needs to put as much distance between the two of them as possible. He needs to protect him from whatever happens next. 

"Please," Dan whimpers. "Please go."

"I can't," he says, "I'm Leon, I'm nice I promise. I'm only here to help."

Leon is nice. He seems really nice, and Dan wants to tell him thank you for being concerned, for taking time out of his day to offer help to a stranger who looked like he was having a bad time. The world doesn't have enough of that. 

But he can't say anything. He doubles over with another spike of pain, the static crackling loud in his ears. He hopes it's just him, he hopes it's only him that can hear the magic from within himself, and not that Leon will be able to hear it too.

He needs to go. He needs to get down these stairs and away.

He tries, ducking out from under Leon's outstretched hands and towards the stairs. But his step doesn't land on the next step down, it connects with nothing at all as his legs buckle underneath him and he's pitched forward, spinning through the air. His shoulder collides with a step half way down, his hip a few more still, and as he lands at the bottom, his entire body exploding with pain, there is an explosive flash of orange light and a rush of heat. 

He hears Leon's agonized screams echo off the walls, flames licking higher all around them. There is a loud boom, the banister crumbling to nothing, fire hot and dangerous spreading to the floors above and below. 

Dan can't see, he can't get sight of the destruction he's created beyond a haze mass of orange flames, black smoke, and the disappearing walls. 

Leon's scream dies into silence and Dan tries to call for him, tries to shout his guilt and pain into the room. He wants to apologise for this. He caused it, this is all his fault. This terrible terrible thing is all because of him. 

But Dan can't speak, the smoke is thick and it chokes him, collecting in his throat. His vision dims around the edges until it's gone completely and his body slumps against the final stair, curved inward on himself. Dan's last thought is of Phil cross legged on his couch, his wand tapping against his thigh in a shower of sparks. In his mind's eye, Dan wants to reach out and draw the image nearer, but it's all over. It fades to black before he can even try.


	6. Chapter Six

Dan comes to with a deep, aching gasp, arms and legs twitching against a soft mattress. The light is too bright, and his shoulder and hip protest with a screech of pain. 

"Oh there you are," a female voice says, "hello."

Dan blinks, the room coming into focus. There are three pairs of eyes peering down at him, three people wearing expressions with varying amounts of concern, all of them in robes. Dan groans. 

"What happened?"

"Well," the blonde Mediwitch to his left says, "we were rather hoping you might be able to help us with that."

She's the same one from last time, the one with the gap between her teeth. Louise. She seems friendly, at least, but the two stern looking wizards on his right look less so. 

They're in Auror robes, an emblem on their right breast informs him. Far too many buckles, is Dan's first thought, but he likes the aesthetic. 

"Can you tell us your name, first of all?" Louise says. 

He didn't expect her to recognise him, there are so many patients in and out of here, he's just some guy that came in with a burnt hand and no idea what was going on. 

"Dan," he says, "Dan Howell." 

"Alright," Louise smiles at him, warm and genuine, "I'll go get you admitted. We've fixed a broken shoulder, and a bruised hip, and we cleared up a lot of your burns, you went through quite a bit of ointment. You might be a bit stiff, just while it keeps working, but otherwise you should be just fine. Sit tight, I'll get a Healer to come and look at you." 

She bustles towards the door with the parchment of his notes in her hands, and Dan turns his head to the other side of the bed, where two sets of angry eyes glare down at him. 

"Play nice you two," Louise says to the Aurors, and then disappears from view. 

Dan swallows, hard, his throat still a little raw from the smoke, and adjusts himself on the bed. Louise was right, he is stiff, but there is no outright pain where he expects to find it. 

"Mr Howell," the shorter of the two says, arms folded across his chest. He has dark hair, parted on the side, and his face is such a shape that his stern expression doesn't really suit him. "I am Auror Dobbs, and this is my partner Auror Liguori. You were involved in a rather severe violation of the statute of secrecy today, do you want to walk us through what happened?" 

"I'm not… there was an explosion," Dan says. 

His throat is scratchy, and he doesn't know where to start with the story. Phil had said that Wandlack Pressure took him ages to find, that it isn't widely known, so it's not something these Aurors are likely to understand.

The taller of the two Aurors glares at him some more. His hair is riotous mess on his head, flopping down over round glasses that Dan had thought went out of fashion years ago, for fear of being too reminiscent of that Boy Who Lived bloke. 

"An explosion which you caused," Auror Liguori says, "But the spell isn't indicated in any of our Identifying Charms. Perhaps you'd enlighten us to what Dark magic you're using." 

"I'm not—" Dan says, trying to sit up but finding he still feels too stiff all over. It's difficult to move but he wrestles his heavy limbs into a position that's almost a sit. "I didn't use Dark Magic I—"

There is a pop of someone apparating behind them and Dan cranes his neck to look round the two Aurors, who turn in the direction of the noise. They look shocked, as if they weren't expecting someone to appear in the room. 

Dan still finds it jarring to see magic so out in the open, but less so to see Phil in the entrance way to his room. He should have know.

"Dan? I saw your name on the intake parchment, are you… Oh, hey guys." 

Phil smiles at the stern members of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, in his usual happy-go-lucky way, and Dan can't believe it. 

"What are you apparating for, Phil?" Auror Dobbs says, "I thought apparation in St Mungo's was reserved for the Welcome Witch and emergencies." 

"Yeah," Phil says, "You're right. I guess I must have read the parchment wrong, I thought there was an emergency in here. Oops."

He shrugs, grins, and he's just goofy and adorably odd enough to get away with what Dan can see is a blatant lie. They go with it, but Auror Liguori's eyebrow twitches like he hasn't quite swallowed it .

"No emergency," Dan says, his voice croaky from his sore throat, "just a… accident." 

"Yes," Auror Liguori says, "We were just trying to get to the bottom of that." 

"You're being really intense Peej," Phil says, coming closer to the bed with an easy smile. Dan can see finger tracks in his quiffed hair, like he's run his fingers through it recently. "Is he always like this at work, Dean?" 

Auror Dobbs laughs. He has a nice laugh, and a nice smile, and it suits his face much more than the scowl does. Liguori doesn't give in quite so easily. 

"Do you want to run through it again?" 

Three pairs of eyes are looking at him now, expectant, waiting. 

"It was an accident," Dan says, again, "not Dark Magic, I swear. I don't know what—" 

"It's a medical condition," Phil says, interrupting Dan's search for an explanation, "Dan here is part of my latest research." 

"Oh really?" Auror Dobbs says, "What kind of research?" 

Dan would like to know the same. He keeps his eyes trained on Phil, the tight set of his jaw that - while Dan doesn't know him really well enough to be sure - looks like he might be lying.

"Phil," Auror Liguori says, "I don't know what kind of research you're doing but we can't allow someone who goes around randomly blowing up buildings to go free." 

They're all on first name terms, Dan notes, and it makes him anxious to think of Phil making up this story about some kind of research with his friends, like he thinks it might be necessary to hide the real reason he knows Dan. 

Dan had been right not to mention the Wandlack Pressure, it seems.

He has no choice but to go along with it, to trust that Phil knows what he's doing, knows more about the nuances of this situation than Dan does.

"You blew up a building?" Phil says, turning to Dan. He takes his wand out of his pocket and holds it up over Dan's chest like he means to run some kind of diagnostic. 

Phil flicks his wrist, but Dan reaches out his own hand, curling fingers around Phil's knuckles, the ridge of his bones bumpy and prominent. It's the closest he's come to holding a wand in five years.

He shakes his head when Phil quirks a brow in his direction. 

"I'm fine," Dan says, "I had some burns or whatever but I feel…" 

"Ahem." Auror Dobbs clears his throat and Phil looks up. 

The moment bursts, Dan realising that Phil had been so focussed on him, on the possibility that he was badly injured, that they've been ignoring the Aurors entirely. 

"Sorry," Phil says, noticing them again for the first time. "That just… changes my research."

Dan is too preoccupied with the impending doom of being sent to Azkaban to question Phil's lie too much beyond going along with it, but he does file it away for later. If he somehow gets out of this he needs an explanation.

"Phil," Dobbs says, "this is dangerous. He violated the statute, we had to obliviate an entire street, and a few over, into thinking there was a gas leak and an explosion. 

"Did Leon make it?" Dan says, the memory of his scream rushing back to him, quick enough to send his heart racing. "He was on the stairs— " 

"There was a Muggle found close to you. We provided some emergency field medicine as an intervention and sent him on his way to a Muggle hospital. As I understand it, he should be fine." 

Liguori is glaring, but all Dan can do is heave a sigh of relief. He wants to cry, he can feel it building up in his chest. It was all his fault, all of it. Leon nearly died, _Dan_ nearly died. And now he might go to Azkaban. Maybe it's what he deserves. 

"Peej," Phil says, "Dean. I can guarantee that nothing like this will happen again." 

Dan takes another tentative breath, trying to steady the way it catches in his chest, forcing down the tears that are threatening to fall. It won't do him any favours to appear weak, to let his emotions control what is happening here. He needs to keep it together, to follow Phil's lead and trust that what he's doing is the best thing. 

He doesn't know why Phil is helping him. Maybe it has more to do with hiding his involvement. Phil knew what Dan was capable of, he knew about the Wandlack Pressure and the way Dan had set fire to his wardrobe, so it makes more sense that this is about protecting himself, more than it is about protecting Dan.

Auror Liguori is stone-faced and he folds his arms over his chest. He's tall, though not broad by any stretch of the imagination, but he still cuts an imposing figure as he looks Phil in the eye defiantly. 

He shakes his head, and Dobbs holds a hand out, palm flat to the air, as if tempering down the situation.

"No," Liguori says, holding firm, "We can't just—" 

"Please, Peej." Phil says, "We've been friends since you came in with a hex during my residency. I didn't screw up your face when I closed that nasty gash, and I'm not going to steer you wrong now. Please... do this for me? Let it go." 

"You're a healer Phil," Liguori says, "you cleared up my face because that's your job. We're friends, I get that. But this is _my_ job, I've got to do it." 

"Your job is to protect people," Phil says, dropping a hand onto the bed next to Dan's thigh. Dan can feel the warmth of him and it's oddly perturbing. "And Dan isn't dangerous. It's a simple medical thing. That I can get under control." 

They stare at each other so intently that Dan thinks he can feel some silent magic flowing between them, crackling in the air like the sky after a thunderstorm. 

"We could consider it," Dobbs says, drawing Liguori's attention. 

"Are you mad?" 

"Just—" Dobbs pulls on Liguori's arm and directs him towards the door. "Excuse us." 

They leave the room to stand just outside. Dan can hear their hushed voices talking heatedly. Phil shifts at his side and he takes a moment to whisper to him. 

"I'm sorry," Dan says, his voice quiet but still a little croaky. 

"Are you alright?" Phil responds, his eyes tracking the planes of Dan's face, across his shoulders and down his chest partway.

"I'm fine," Dan says, again. He squirms under Phil's gaze, but doesn't let it show. "I don't even think I need a Healer to be honest." 

Phil suddenly straightens, his shoulders snapping back. His wand taps against his thigh and the underside of Dan's bed is lit up with a shower of sparks. 

"Good," Phil says. "I'm… er, glad."

Dan feels restless. He still aches, and he'll probably feel banged up for a few days, but his skin feels tingly and new all over, letting him know just how many burns they'd fixed. Just how many Leon might have right now, and have to suffer through a much longer recovery. 

"What happened?" Phil says after a moment, "why didn't you… didn't you do any magic at all? Like we talked about?" 

Dan can't meet Phil's eye when he shakes his head. The crisp white sheets rustle underneath him, and he feels the bed dip as Phil presses the back of his knuckles down into the mattress and leans with his full weight. His head dips, the soft hair at the nape of his neck exposed. For a brief second, Dan has the urge to rest the flat of his palm just there, to feel the soft coolness of it against his newly healed skin. But then Phil sighs, a long soft sound, and Dan snaps out of it.

"Dan…" Phil starts, but the door opens, cutting him off. 

Phil whips his head up and steps back to a respectable distance away from the bed, from Dan. 

"We have a proposal," Dobbs says. 

The two of them still look imposing, dark robes with shiny buckles across their chests. How did Dan end up here? He's been so controlled and distanced from this world for so long, so why is he now thrust right into the heart of it.

"The only way we can see to allowing him to walk out of here is to ensure that he'll be monitored. As such, Mr Howell will be placed under your supervision," Liguori says, looking directly at Phil 

"Mine?" Phil is full of alarm, looking between Liguori and Dobbs and every so often down at Dan who cowers under the scrutiny. 

"Yes," Dobbs says, "we have to do something, mate. I know you said he isn't a threat but… a building. He blew up a building."

"Dean," Phil says, "PJ. Please."

"It has to be this way," Liguori says, "we're friends Phil, like you said, which is the only reason we're even considering something like this. But I have to do my job, just as much as you have to do yours. So… it's on you, if anything happens, if he hurts anyone else. That's on you."

"He won't," Phil insists. 

"Good," Dobbs replies. 

"If he has another incident you'll both be held responsible," Liguori says, "I don't want to do this Phil, I don't want to tangle you up in it but you're making me… If your research is so important to you that you'd put people at risk, then we do it this way, or we take him in right now."

The silence that falls after that is heavy and leaden with the kind of decision Dan wishes wasn't necessary. 

"Phil, you don't have to—"

"Okay," Phil says, cutting Dan off entirely. "I'll do it. I'll watch him."

"You can't," Dan says, trying to sit up and groaning with the effort of it. "This isn't your responsibility, it has nothing to do with you."

"I can," Phil says, placing a warm hand on Dan's shoulder to ease him back onto the fluffy pillows.

Phil is looking at the Aurors with an expression Dan hasn't seen before. A touch of hurt mixed with a steely determination that creases the corners of his eyes and lights a fire in his pupils. 

"Phil," Liguori says, "This isn't personal, it's just—" 

"Dan needs to rest," Phil says. "So, if that's everything?" 

Dobbs looks between them, a tight anxious expression on his face. 

"We'll go," Liguori says. "Phil… if you need anything, if—" 

"I won't." 

Liguori nods once, a sharp bob of his head, and makes his way to the door with Dobbs in tow. 

"We'll still see you for pub night on Friday though, yeah?" Dobbs says. 

"Sure," Phil nods. "If PJ still wants… sure."

"He'll be fine," Dobbs smiles, "You know how he gets. First round is on me, seeya later." 

Phil allows him all of two seconds silence before he rounds on him once they are alone. 

"What the hell?" he says. 

"Me?" Dan responds, "What about you? Research?" 

"It was all I could think of to— That's beside the point. You blew up a building!" 

"It was an accident. It was the," Dan drops his voice to a whisper, "the Wandlack Pressure." 

Phil takes a deep breath in through his nose and Dan can hear the air rushing in, "I know," he says, "But I thought we talked about it. I thought you were going to try and do a bit of magic to keep it at bay. It wouldn't take a lot."

Dan bites down on his bottom lip. It's dry and chapped like it almost always is, but even the familiarity of that isn't enough to make him feel at home in his body. His skin feels new, there is energy fizzing under his skin in a way he's becoming used to, and it feels as though everything about his own physiology is rebelling against him. 

"I can't," Dan says, voice choked, "I can't do magic, Phil." 

"You have to do something," Phil says. He drops down to sit on the edge of Dan's bed and Dan can't help but think that it can't be normal for a Healer to do that. Their voices are low, the room tense and quiet besides, and this doesn't feel like a regular Healer-Patient conversation anymore. 

"What about the de-pressurisation?" Dan suggests, "that worked before. I felt loads better after that." 

Phil is so close that Dan can feel it when he shakes his head, rather than just see it. "We can't," Phil says, "it's not exactly… we can't."

Dan nods, "Okay." His breath is a whisper against the sheets, pulled up to his chin. The white cotton flutters softly, tickling his bottom lip, and he longs to pull it up over his head, to hide from all of this for a while. 

"I'm sorry," Phil says.

"It's not your… this isn't your responsibility," Dan repeats, "It's on me. But I can't do magic it's not—" Dan bites down on his lip and twists his hand into the bedsheets. "I can't. I just don't know what I'm going to do, if this happens again. Can you call them back? Can you tell the Aurors that you don't want to—"

Phil's hand squeezes his shoulder, long fingers a warm comfort against the bone of his arm, silencing him immediately. Dan is working past the knot in his throat, gulping around it and searching for the words to tell Phil that he doesn't want him involved in this, that it doesn't seem fair. All Phil had tried to do was help, and now he's wrapped up in Dan's mess. Dan opens his mouth to speak, but Phil's weight is lifting from the bed, leaving him alone. Dan feels colder instantly, shivering under the layers of stress and shock. 

"It would have to be away from here," Phil says, pacing at the foot of Dan's bed, his words are quick and they all run together, barely a breath between them. "It's too dangerous to try to do it at St. Mungos. Magic sharing isn't a practise people particularly care for, all of the literature I read on it doesn't exactly seem favourable and while I don't think it's exactly illegal anymore it's definitely... " and here Phil does pause, meeting Dan's eyes with his own wide ones. "It might be the only way." 

"What?" Dan says. 

"We'd have to do it regularly. We can't let it build up as much as it has been. You had five years of pressure before your first accident and while I managed to siphon a little bit of it off I don't think… it obviously wasn't enough to keep you level for a week before you had a much larger incident. It would be far too dangerous for me to do anymore than I did last time, and much better for me to do a little less. So with the release you'll have had from the explosion if we did it fairly soon and then—" 

"Phil," Dan calls, his voice louder than it has been, the raspy croak more evident with the added volume. "Slow down, what are you talking about?" 

Phil pivots on his heels, the soles of his shoes squeak against the linoleum flooring. He has his wand back in his hand, _tap tap tapping_ against his thigh, the ever-present trickle of sparks in rainbow colours appearing periodically. Dan doesn't want to be looking at it, but he can't tear his eyes away. 

"De-pressurisation," Phil says. "It's not… we have to be careful, but I think we can do it." 

"Oh." 

"It'll have to be once a week," Phil says, "the first one happening relatively soon. If we want to stay ahead of the pressure building. And… we'll do it at my apartment. Not here." 

"Your apartment?" 

"It seems like the safest option. We can't do it at St. Mungos, and you live in a Muggle building."

"Right." 

"Thursday?" Phil says. 

Dan can't help but think that it feels like Phil is inviting him to something dangerous. He wants to follow Phil's lead like he has been since he appeared in the room out of nowhere, lying about how they knew each other and involving himself in Dan's problems. But he can't.

He nods his head, agreeing with him outwardly, silent and compliant. Inside however, his insides twist and churn, fear sparks through him. He's scared of this, of how easily it could all go wrong, how that will mean bringing Phil down with him so that they both get brought up before the Wizengamot. 

But what other choice does he have?


	7. Chapter Seven

St. Mungo's, while not unpleasant in any tangible way Dan can think of, makes Dan feel uneasy. 

The staff are all perfectly nice, and he hasn't seen anything so horrific as to scar him for life, but there is magic at every turn and it's that, more than the place itself, that makes Dan want to leave as fast as possible. 

Phil insists on an overnight stay. It almost definitely hadn't been necessary, and Dan had pointed this out to him several times, but he still spends a night in a hospital bed, listening to all manner of curious sounds coming from the corridors beyond. 

As he's leaving, Phil stops him in the doorway to his room. 

"Tomorrow," he says, "come to my place." 

"Right. For the er… yeah." 

"I really don't see another way," Phil says. He puts his hands in the pockets of his Healer robes, and shrugs. "Are you sure you want to do this?" 

Dan still feels unsure, a little scared, because de-pressurisation is the only way, but it isn't the easiest. And, as Phil had explained, it isn't exactly legitimate Healer practise.

"Yeah. I'm sure." Dan just wants to leave, he has somewhere he needs to be and he's dying to get out of this magical environment. Even if he does have to go back to one tomorrow. The chips can fall where they may, Dan will go along with Phil's plan and anything that comes with it because he doesn't have another choice. "Hey, where do you live anyway?" 

"Oh," Phil says, brightening, "in a small wizarding village up north." 

"Up north?" Dan says, "isn't that a little far? Must be one hell of a commute to work." 

"I apparate in most days," Phil says, "and there's the floo." 

Dan rolls his eyes, mostly at himself. "Of course," he says, "I suppose a commute isn't really a thing for wizards." 

"You're a wizard too," Phil says. 

Dan catches his eyes, that still could be a glamour for how blue they are, and blinks at him. He doesn't really have a comeback for that, at least not one that isn't along the petty lines of 'no I'm not' when objectively he is. 

He doesn't have the time, or the energy, to argue. 

"How do I get to your place, then?" Dan says. 

Phil looks thoughtful, "I'm assuming you can't apparate?" 

Dan levels him with a look.

"Alright," Phil says, "it was worth asking. Um, could you get to Diagon Alley? I could pick you up from there." 

It's been a while since Dan has been there. Years, longer even than any of the other magical experiences he's been avoiding. Diagon Alley had always been, to Dan, the entire gateway to the magical world, even if he learned later that it wasn't at all true, that the magical places of London, England, of the world, existed anywhere and everywhere, woven into the fabric of muggle places, hidden and unseen. Diagon Alley felt like the start of everything for him at 11, so much so that in his last two years of school he hadn't bothered to go and do his back to school shopping. He couldn't face it. He just wrote to Flourish and Blotts and had his books delivered to Hogwarts. 

It's asking more than Phil knows, but Dan concedes that it's not something he needs to avoid if it costs him more to stay away.

"I could… yeah. I can go there." 

Dan thinks that if Phil is going to take on the responsibility of keeping an eye on him, of doing this crazy magic procedure that is seemingly frowned upon, and from his own home no less, then Dan should probably make some allowances in return. 

"Great," Phil says, "I'll meet you there and we can apparate together." 

They agree a place, and a time, and then Dan is free to go. 

He doesn't go straight home, he travels across London to another hospital, a muggle one, and asks for Leon at the front desk. He doesn't have a surname, or any details, but he does know when he was brought in, and what had happened, so the woman - who doesn't appear out of thin air - points him in the direction of the ward he needs. 

Leon hasn't woken up, but he's alive. He has far less burns than Dan had anticipated, only down one side, but that's probably down to the on-scene work of the DMLE more than it is Dan's own luck. 

"Are you a friend of Leon's?" A slightly older man says, sitting in the chair next to the hospital bed. He's probably mid forties, with sad eyes and round glasses. Salt and pepper hair and a hand wrapped around the fingers of Leon's hand so tightly Dan isn't sure whose fingers are who's. 

"I… know him from work," Dan says. 

Sad Eyes nods and looks at him with a knowing kind of sympathy. 

"I'm Elliot," he says, "Leon's partner."

Dan takes a step into the room. A monitor by Leon's head beeps and a bag of clear fluid slowly drips into a series of plastic tubing. He looks like he's sleeping.

"He's been in and out," Elliot says, "he doesn't seem to remember much about what happened. I don't know why he was taking the stairs, he hates exercise, I can't even get him to walk to the next underground stop most days. Even though me, and his Fitbit app, are constantly nagging him to."

Elliot makes a soft, sad sound that could be a chuckle, he looks away from Dan and has to clear his throat and take a breath before looking back. 

"Were you working when the gas leak happened?" Elliot says. 

"Yes," Dan says.

"Lucky that it only took out that corner of the building. I don't know whether it's good luck, or really really bad luck that Leon was the only one seriously hurt." 

"A bit of both, I reckon," Dan offers. 

Elliot looks down at Leon and unwinds their hands. He pats across Leon's knuckles and stands up. 

"I'll let you just…" he says, "if he wakes up, tell him I've just stepped out. I'm going to grab a cup of coffee, did you want anything?"

"I'm fine," Dan says, "thanks."

When Elliot leaves Dan pulls up a different chair, blue plastic on black metal legs, and sets it down on the opposite side of Leon's bed. 

It takes him a while to come up with what to say. He knows that this would be a lot worse if not for magic, but if it wasn't for Dan's magic Leon wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. 

It's not fair that Dan gets to go to St. Mungo's and get out of this unscathed, it's not fair that Leon was involved in this at all, that his compassion and care for a stranger put him in this position because it was the wrong stranger, the wrong time, the wrong place. None of this is fair and Dan feels the heavy, painful pull of guilt ripping through him. 

He can't find words for any of that, for the way that the angry red stripes of burnt flesh on Leon's forearm make him feel. They look almost delicate in the way they curve around his muscles, into the dip of his inner elbow, there's discolouration, red and singed and shiny, all the way up over his shoulder, collarbone, the line of his jaw. He'll carry this forever, and it's all Dan's fault.

Dan drops his head into his hands, knuckles pressing hard into his hairline, and sobs. 

"I'm sorry," he says, between breaths, "I'm so, so sorry." 

That's how Elliot finds him ten minutes later, head in his hands, bowed down low over Leon's bed. Leon hadn't woken up, but his chest rises and falls in even breaths and the monitor slowly beeps above their heads. 

"He'll be okay," Elliot says, a strong hand on Dan's shoulder, stronger than his appearance would suggest. "He's still beautiful, always will be in my eyes."

Dan blinks wet lashes, and looks up at Elliot's own sad, watery smile. 

"I'm… sorry. That this happened."

"Me too," Elliot says, "but bad things happen all the time, to all kinds of people. No one deserves them, but I don't think it would do us any good to be angry about the hand we are dealt."

"Leon didn't deserve it," Dan says, "he was… is, a good person."

"The best," Elliot agrees, nodding and leaving Dan's side to take his seat, picking up Leon's hand once again. "Which is why he wouldn't want us to be angry on his behalf either, or sad. He'd say, 'Elli, this world is sad and dark enough without us adding to it.' And he'd be right."

"I wish I thought like that."

"Me too," Elliot confesses, "but I do my best, and that's all anyone can ask of us."

Dan stays for a little longer, talking to Elliot and looking down at Leon, tapping a foot unconsciously along with the gentle beep of the machines. 

Leon still doesn't wake up, but Elliot reminds Dan that healing is tiring work, and that Leon needs all the rest he can get. 

Dan leaves shortly after. It's painful to watch Elliot's unerring grip on Leon's hand, the pure unabashed affection on his face when he looks at his sleeping partner, scarred and still. That's what love looks like, Dan thinks, and he can't even bear to be around it.

When he gets home, finally back in his bare little flat, he feels as if he can finally breathe. 

He makes tea and sits on his couch and it's only then that he remembers the picture of Phil that had fluttered through his mind in the final moments of the accident. 

Just phil, sitting on his couch in his bright clothes and black hair, long legs crossed like he's a child, looking both innocently small and long and gangly all at once. He has no idea why it was that image that stuck with him enough to think about in that moment, and can only assume it's because Phil is the most contact he's had with magic in some time, and Phil comes to it so effortlessly. 

It sits well on Phil, the absent minded sparks against his thigh, the casual way he flips his wand around his fingers, clumsy and odd in every other sense except with magic. 

And now Dan has to spend more time around him - once a week at least - to get de-pressurised. It's more contact than he'd ever wanted to have with the magical world, but one day a week is a small sacrifice to make if it means he never has to pick up a wand again. So that he can still talk to his mum and his brother and ignore the thing that makes them look at him like he's something to be scared of. 

Dan blows across the top of his mug, steam curling in uneven swirls, and takes a hot, refreshing sip. As he does, his front door opens. 

"Kettle's just boiled," he says, without looking. 

"Are you fucking kidding me?" 

Reena launches herself across the arm of the sofa and barrels into him. Dan has to tighten his grip on the hot tea and hold it out and above them to avoid spilling it as the whole sofa shifts under weight. 

"Is that it?" she says, punching his arm, hard. "No word from you at all after a massive accident at your work and all you've got to say to me is 'the kettle's just boiled'?"

"What?" 

"I've been texting you non-stop! The gas explosion was all over the news and you didn't even bother to tell me you were okay. I half thought you might be dead, or at least seriously hurt. I almost felt sorry for you, you absolute asshole."

"I'm fine..." 

"Yes. Here you are without a scratch on you, and I'm worried sick. You didn't even have the decency to text me back." 

Dan reaches out to grab her hand as she raises it to give him another thump in the arm and he feels her go limp against his palm. 

"I'm sorry," he says. "My phone must have died, I didn't get your texts, I had no idea you'd be worried." 

"Of course I was," Reena says, pressing their palms together, holding his hand as if he might disappear again at any minute. "I'm not completely heartless. Though, I do sometimes wonder if you're worth it. Where were you?" 

"Hospital," he says, "they kept me in overnight for observation, I'm fine though. Honestly." 

"Did you do something stupid like inhale a bunch of smoke?" 

"Yeah..." Dan says, figuring that that is as good a cover story as any, "Yeah, smoke inhalation. They just wanted to check I was alright before they let me go. But I'm fine, honest."

Reena gives him a once over, from the top of his head down to his socked feet. He wiggles his toes and he breathes out through her nose sharply. It's almost a laugh, but not quite. 

Satisfied that he isn't hiding any nasty injuries, or bleeding out from somewhere unseen, he heaves herself up from the couch and puts her back to him. 

"That kettle better still be warm," she says. "Or you're in big trouble." 

"Sure," he says, "the disappearing act you're fine with, but cold tea will get me the riot act?" 

Her footsteps stop and he turns around to look at her over the back of the sofa. She's stood in his tiny kitchen, hovering near the fridge. 

"I'm not fine with it," she corrects him, "I'm just glad you're alright. But don't mistake me, if you do anything like that again I won't let it go so easily." 

"I promise I'll try to avoid any explosions," he says, surprising himself with how earnest he sounds. 

Reena's eyes narrow, the thick black wing of liner she wears, and her naturally thick lashes making them look even smaller. Which is impressive, given how wide and open her eyes usually are. 

"Just make sure you do," she says, sounding just as earnest as Dan does, which is out of character entirely. "You know I haven't got anyone else around here, right? You're it."

Dan has to look away, and Reena does the same. She's it for him, too, most of the time. He lives far away from his family, and he doesn't see them often - and they probably prefer it that way - and Reena is the only person he really spends any amount of time with. She's in a whole other country from her family, and Dan feels he might as well be, so they're kind of each other's family. In a way. 

"Haven't you got any coffee?" Reena asks, once the moment has passed. 

"Only the instant stuff," Dan says. "There's tea." 

"I don't want any of your English nonsense. I'm American, I need coffee." 

"You're a caffeine addict," Dan says, "that has nothing to do with being American." 

Dan can't see her, but he knows she flips him off.

"I'm going back to mine to get a decent cup of coffee and then I'm coming back," Reena opens his front door and is half way out before she seems to rethink herself and come back in. "You'd better be here when I get back. And no explosions." 

Dan nods, and tries not to shrink under her hard stare. She has no idea how hard he's trying to avoid that, the lengths he's going to go to tomorrow just to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. 

"Promise," he says. And he means it.


	8. Chapter Eight

_Three up, two across. Tap, tap, tap._

A small hole opens into an archway large enough for Dan to pass through, and he's impressed with how little he allows that to affect him. As he steps out onto a cobbled street, he's also perturbed at how some information can stay with you, even if it's been years since you used it. How to get into Diagon Alley, for instance, doesn't seem to have left him. 

The row of mismatched, old buildings lining the street sit almost as odds with each other, yet settled in their positions. Almost alive, the busy street hums with busy witches and wizards going about their day, bright coloured robes, hats, all manner of activity up and down the narrow cobbles. Dan steps out into it and is immediately taken back to being eleven, to seeing this for the first time and realising he was a world away from where he'd started. 

His mum had come with him the first time, through the Leaky Cauldron with it's odd patrons, even though her eyes had mostly slid from the bookshop to the record shop on Charing Cross Road without really seeing the pub at all. But Dan had. 

They'd wandered through, and then out into the courtyard, tapped the same bricks Dan had only moments ago and were greeted with a sight much like this one. 

His mum had shivered at his side and then the next year, had stayed in a coffee shop a few doors along without entering the Leaky Cauldron at all, while Dan went to fetch his school supplied. 

Eventually, Dan stopped coming too. 

He can't blame her for feeling out of place here, there's no mistaking it for any part of muggle London, not with all the sights to see. The movement in one window alone is enough to tell you that you are far away from everything you know and love. 

Diagon Alley isn't so long that Dan is left wandering alone between the many people, dressed in his muggle clothes and feeling as out of place as he always does, before he finds Phil.

He's outside Fortescue's holding a large cardboard tub of ice cream almost as big as his head. It's got a chocolate frog perched on top, shivering slightly with the cold, and Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans scattered over the soft multi coloured waves of the chilled dessert. 

Phil offers him a friendly wave that nearly sends his ice cream tumbling to the ground but Phil manages to save it just before disasters strikes. 

"Hey Dan," Phil greets him, a wide smile on his face, eyes glittering in the bright sunshine. 

"Hi," Dan says. He puts his hands in his jeans pockets and looks around them, feeling conspicuous, like someone might work out that he doesn't really belong here. 

"Did you want to get an ice cream? They've got butterbeer flavour left." 

"Oh... er-- No, thanks." 

Dan watched as the chocolate frog on the top of Phil's ice cream, finally fed up with the cold, makes a bid for freedom. It's only a charm, and it isn't really alive, but it still makes Dan wince when Phil catches it, and takes a big bite. 

"Sorry," Phil says, "I don't get to come down here very much, so when I do I like to get an ice cream form Fortescue's." 

Dan nods, like he understands completely. 

"Mum says it doesn't quite taste the same as it used to when old Fortescue actually ran the place. I can't really remember, I think I was too little. But this is still good, and it's nice that they kept the name when it reopened." 

Dan, overwhelmed by everything that's already happened today, struggles to keep up with Phil as he rattles through this monologue about ice cream, between bites of the stuff. they've turned down towards the bottom end of Diagon Alley, and Dan keeps his eyes on the large building at the bottom, Gringotts. 

"It closed?" Dan says, conversationally. 

He wants Phil to keep talking, it's easier to ignore his surroundings if he can just focus on Phil's voice. 

"During the... you know. Mr Fortescue was... Well— " 

Phil doesn't need to finish his sentence for Dan to understand what he means. Whenever anyone gets a hushed tone like that it's usually something to do with the war. Nearly twenty years on and the effects are still being felt. Everywhere. 

"The apparition point is just past Gringotts," Phil says. "Do you need to stop off anywhere while you're here?" 

"No," Dan says, looking down at the cobbles beneath his feet. "I'm good." 

There is a lull in conversation as they make their way down the short lane, but as they pass by the large wizarding bank, Phil looks up at it wistfully. 

"Do you know they used to have a dragon in there?" 

"A dragon?" Dan says. 

"Yeah! They're not allowed one anymore because it was seen as like, cruel and unusual punishment or something, and there was this one time that it got out and all hell broke loose. But they used to have one, guarding everyone's money and whatever." 

Phil seems positively delighted with the idea of a dragon. Dan can't think of anything worse. 

"I've never been in," he says. 

"Never?" 

"No." 

Phil's brow twitches, like he's confused and he wants to ask why someone wouldn't have been in Gringotts, but he doesn't. Instead, he turns down the back of the building and they arrive at the apparition point with very little fanfare. 

"Have you done this before?" Phil asks, warily. 

Dan thinks he's had just about enough of that pitying look on Phil's face so he lies and says that of course he's done a side-along apparition before and takes Phil's arm when he offers it. 

There is a unpleasant tug behind his navel and then the sensation of being forced through a narrow rubber tube, and Diagon Alley melts away beneath his feet. All at once, as if it is happening in the same instant, both there and here at the same time, Dan finds himself standing in the middle of a rich, red rug, his shin colliding with the edge of a sharp coffee table. 

"Ow!" he exclaims. 

"Uh oh," Phil replies, taking Dan by the shoulders and looking him over, pulling him this way and that as Dan tries to get a hand on his injured leg. "Are you splinched? Where? I'm sorry I thought I had my aim right but I forgot to account for your extra weight." 

Dan shoves at him gently, making Phil take a stumbling half step back as Dan rubs at his bruised shin. "I'm not splinched," he says, angrily, "I just banged my bloody leg on the bloody coffee table." 

"Oh. Phew! I thought I'd done some serious damage." 

Dan feels his anger slide away. Something about Phil's oblivious, odd, cheerfulness endears Dan, makes him forgive the fact that Phil had been clumsy enough to land him on top of a particularly vicious coffee table. 

"It's just a bruise," Dan says, standing upright, "nothing to worry about." 

"I've got some ointment for that, if you want it?" 

Dan shakes his head. "It's just a bruise," he repeats, "I'll live. No need for Healer intervention." 

Dan, leg still throbbing gently under his jeans, looks up to take in his surroundings for the first time. 

The room is a large open-plan space, large windows down one side. They're stood in a cozy living room, a large rug over wooden floors that span the length of the room, and a worn, plump couch sitting at one end of it. There are bookshelves framing a fireplace, crammed with books of varying sizes. They have titles like _A ferntastic guide to magical herbs and roots in the aid of healing_ and _Hermon Humpdinger's advanced cures and antidotes_. 

At the far end of the room, there is a small kitchen. A sink, cabinets and stove top line the back wall, a rounded fridge in a rich navy blue standing beside it. Nearest to them, thought a few paces beyond the chunky wooden table behind the couch, is a kitchen island with two rickety stools, one green, one red. They look like they are possibly handmade, thought Dan can't tell if it was by Phil or someone else entirely. Either way, he doesn't think he wants to chance his luck by sitting on one. 

The cosy, mismatched furniture isn't odd in itself, it's just that nothing really seems to go together, or at least it shouldn't, but Dan finds himself thinking that in fact, it does. 

The overall barrage of colours aren't the most striking thing about Phil's house though. what stands out most to Dan is the frankly surreal amount of plants littering every surface imaginable. 

There are dittany plants lining one windowsill, wolfsbane in another. Thistles crowd the corner of one kitchen unit, and some ivy trails down from a large sprawl on top of the fridge, a tendril curling down the exposed side of it. 

On the sharp coffee table, and acting as bookends on the shelving units, are many, many more than Dan can't even recall the name of. Some are magical, some are those he recognises from the muggle world. Most of them are drooping or turning brown on their edges. 

"Plants," Dan finds himself saying. 

"Er... yeah." 

Phil swoops up a burgundy pot containing something with large leaves, dark green in their middles with a line of creamy mint in a ring on the edges. It wobbles in his arms and Phil looks around as if to find somewhere to stash it so that Dan won't be able to see how it is wrinkly with neglect. 

Dan laughs at him softly, because even if Phil were to find somewhere to hide this particular plant amidst the already cluttered surroundings, there are any number of others giving him away. 

"I really liked herbology," Phil says, hugging the plant to his chest, "but I'm not very good at gardening charms." 

"You could try watering them?" Dan suggests. 

Phil blinks as though the thought hadn't occurred to him, and puts the plant down on the edge of a side table. It's dangerously close to falling, seeing as it's now crammed in next to another forest green pot containing a rounded bush with soft purple flowers. Dry petals cascade down onto the cherrywood surface of the table, and Phil sighs heavily. 

"I swear I'm better at healing than these plants suggest," Phil says. 

Dan meets his blue eyes and, for the millionth time, wonders if they are in fact a glamour. He looks nervous, like Dan might have taken one look at this cosy colourful chaos and changed his opinion of Phil as a Healer entirely. 

"I know," Dan says. "I mean, that's why I'm here." 

Phil smiles, and reaches into his pocket for the wand that never seems to be far away. Dan can't take his eyes off it. 

"Tea?" Phil says. 

"Sure." 

There is a wordless spell aimed in the direction of his kitchen and the burner below a stove-top kettle turns on. It's unnerving, but Dan manages not to say anything, or allow his face to give away how uncomfortable he still is around magic. 

Especially given the circumstances. 

Part of him wants to tell Phil to get on with it, to rush through what comes next so he can go home and get away from everything he's worked so hard to avoid. 

But on the other hand, watching Phil in his natural habitat, moving around his kitchen and making tea with magic instead of his hands, is so captivating that Dan can't take his eyes away. 

He's still staring when Phil hands him a steaming mug of tea and tell him to sit. 

"Knut for them?" Phil says.

Dan is sinking down into the too-soft plush of Phil's sofa. He doesn't want to tell Phil that what's he's really thinking is that he'd rather be back in his own living room, that he doesn't want his being here to be necessary. He doesn't want to tell him that despite that, he can't help but feel comfortable in Phil's space, the mismatched furniture and a sofa that's currently trying to eat him whole perfectly reflect just how absurd yet inviting Phil has been the entire time Dan has known him. 

So instead, he asks Phil something else that's been on his mind. 

"Why is this all so secret?" He takes a sip of his hot tea, pausing for it to scold him mildly before he continues. "I get that Wandlack Pressure isn't exactly well known, but… people wouldn't understand if we explained it to them." 

Phil taps the edge of a fingernail against the ceramic of his mug. A dull tinkling sounds from it, _tap, tap, tap_. Dan half expects another portal to open up. 

"It's not the Wandlack Pressure that's the problem," Phil says. He's shifting in his seat as if trying to get comfortable. "It's the de-pressurisation." 

"Why?" 

Phil takes a breath and puts his mug down on the coffee table. He lifts his legs, turning to face Dan and crossing them in front of him on the seat. Once again he looks small and long all at the same time and Dan wonders how he does that. 

Dan picks himself up out of the cushion again and meets Phil's intent stare with one of his own. Maybe Phil doesn't want to tell him about it, but Dan has a right to know. If he's taking part in this, if it's his only option, he deserves to know what the hell he's getting in to. 

"Magic builds up inside you. There is a limit to how much magic any person can hold, and that's different for everyone. You've probably met people who seem to have more of an affinity for magic than others, or people that don't have any at all." 

"You mean muggles?" 

"I was talking about squibs, really," Phil clarifies. 

"Yeah my… my brother is." 

Phil cocks his head, "I thought you were muggleborn." 

Dan grips his mug tightly, the hot handle digging into his palm. "I'm… I'm half-blood. My Dad was… is, a wizard. But he wasn't around. My mum raised me, so I wasn't brought up around magic at all." 

"Oh," Phil nods, and his face look sympathetic, but it isn't pity.

Dan is thankful for that. He hates the look he gets from people when he tells them that he grew up without a dad. Even more so from magical folk when they find out his dad was a wizard and he was brought up by only his muggle mother. Like he deserves pity because he didn't have a magical influence. 

It's not like his dad would have been much of a good role model even if he was around. 

Dan stopped telling people about it. He stopped telling people anything at all. He didn't mean to let people assume he was muggleborn and not half-blood, but they did, and that was okay. And then, once he left school, he stopped letting people know he was magical at all. 

It was easier to face a world free of pity, free of his mum's shame and fear, if the only price was giving up magic. 

"Yeah, but my brother got off lightly and ended up not presenting with magic at all. I guess he's a squib, or maybe he just got the muggle genes. I don't know how it works with all of that."

Phil looks like he does know how all of that works, and that he could tell Dan if he wanted him to, but Dan shakes his head and waves him off. 

"Anyway," Dan says, "you were saying?"

Phil leaves a beat of silence, looking at Dan like he's a puzzle he'd like to solve, and then carries on. 

"So, there are varying amounts of magic people have, and can tolerate. Using magic reduces it temporarily, and there is of course a limit to how much magic you can do. Really big spells might make people tired, and feel physically draining."

"Okay…"

"But for someone who doesn't use magic, it builds up until you're at capacity and then—"

"Blows up a wardrobe," Dan says, "I know. Then you use de-pressurisation to release the pressure without it exploding. I just… I don't get why that's bad."

"Sorry. I'm getting there I just… okay. So de-pressurisation is just what I call it. It's not really designed to release pressure like that. That's not what the spell is for."

"And, er, what is it… for?" 

"Well, and don't get mad okay?"

"I'm not going to," Dan says. Honestly, he wishes Phil would just get on with it. He doesn't understand why it's such a big deal. 

"It's for magic sharing."

Phil pauses, holding his breath like Dan is about to get really mad and storm out.

"Magic sharing?" Dan blinks at him, because he has no idea what Phil is going on about.

"Oh, you don't… okay." Phil's cheeks are pink, and he squirms in his seat. He's tapping his wand against his folded knee and the sparks are jumping so high that one catches Dan on the hand with a fizz of expended magic. Static, like the shock you sometimes get from metal handrails on public stairwells. "Magic sharing is… was… a really private thing. It's fallen out of use over the years and it's frowned upon these days for the obvious reasons. That's why we can't tell people what we're doing, they wouldn't understand."

"Private?" Dan says. 

"Yeah…" Phil adverts his eyes, looking down at his lap. Wand still tapping. "It was… people used to do it on their wedding night. To sort of… solidify their bond. Feeling each other's magic is like knowing someone… intimately. More intimately than the physical, some people say."

Dan's mouth parts, and he means to fill it with words but he isn't sure which ones they'd be. He remembers Phil taking his hands and the magic pulling from deep inside him, somewhere so deep Dan hadn't known that it existed. It had felt, in that moment, like Phil had reached inside of him and released the valve of pressure of something uniquely him. 

"So it's like a kink thing?" Dan quips, dealing with an awkward situation is in the only way he knows how. 

Phil screws his face up, shaking his head and holding a hand up over his mouth where he's smiling a touch too wide. "You're awful." 

"I'm not the one doing kinky stuff to a person and calling it medial help," Dan says. 

Phil picks up a colourful scatter cushion and Dan ducks when he throws it. It skims well over his head. Phil is either a terrible shot, or he hadn't been meaning to hit Dan at all. 

"Shut up."

Dan laughs, and he's thankful to see Phil looking a little brighter, a little less embarrassed. 

"Seriously though," Dan says, "If it's about… sharing magic. Shouldn't that mean that we exchange magic? That I should have… um, felt something. From you."

"No…" Phil says. He's dropped his voice down low again, the smile fading from his face. "That's because we only did it one way. I wasn't even sure it would work to be honest, usually the person sharing the magic has to sort of… allow it." 

"They have to…" Dan fades off, looking down into his cup of tea and finding his own distorted reflection staring back. "I don't think I did. At least… not intentionally." 

"I figured," Phil says. His voice is quiet, a hushed tone that matches the secretive nature of this conversation. LIke he thinks someone might overhear them. "But I chalked it up to the fact that the pressure was so high. I read a really old account of someone doing it to help someone with Wandlack Pressure after the statue was enforced and I… you were really bad so I thought I'd try it. I didn't… I just wanted to help." 

Dan clears his throat, tuning his voice back to a normal speaking tone and once against straightening himself out of the overwhelming couch. He half suspects it has some kind of ulterior motive, like the sofa is trying so hard to make him comfortable that it's gone all the way round to being unusable. 

"That must be it," he says, "it's fine. It worked, didn't it?" 

Phil nods, but he still looks unsure. 

"Can I ask you another question?" Dan says. One last one and then he'll change the subject, he doesn't want to talk about how what he's here for is the magical equivalent of consummating a marriage, or that he'd apparently unwillingly allowed Phil to siphon off his magic when he shouldn't be able to. 

He isn't sure if that makes him easy. Magically putting it about all over the place.   
"You can always ask me anything," Phil says, a touch too sincere. 

"Right, uh, thanks I— well, I just wondered what you meant when you said that it's frowned upon for 'obvious reasons'. It's not that obvious to me."

Phil taps his wand again, another spark hitting Dan's hand and fizzing lightly. 

"Magic sharing, if done one way in the way that we have been… it gives one person more magic. More power. That's not always…" 

Dan meets Phil's blue eyes and finds that he's tapping his foot against the floor to match the rhythm of Phil's wands hitting his knee. 

"Oh," he says, understanding. "Yeah I guess that's… not great. If someone wanted to… do something awful." 

"There have been attempts," Phil says, gravely, "back in the day. Dark Wizards will do anything for more power, I guess. So people are understandably a bit funny about magic sharing these days." 

"Alright. Then it stays a secret, just between us," Dan drains his tea and places the empty mug on the table next to Phil's where he's left it to go cold. He rubs his hands against his thighs and he steadies his foot on the edge of the rug. "Does it hurt?" 

"You?," Phil says, "Did it hurt last time?" 

"No I— No it didn't. But, I meant you. Does it hurt you?" 

"Oh," Phil seems surprised that Dan has asked. "It's not comfortable, but it doesn't exactly hurt." 

Dan nods, gesturing for him to continue by flipping his hand over. Phil looks down at his exposed palm for a second before finding his voice again.

"It feels a bit like being… zapped," he chuckles, "I don't know. I'm not explaining it very well. I can feel the magic, and it feels… well, everyone's magic feels different so I suppose your magic feels like you."

Dan wants to ask him to elaborate. He wants to know what his magic feels like to Phil, what impression he left on this oddball Healer. It must be enough for him to go out on a limb like this. To do all of this for Dan even though it's probably illegal, and definitely not accepted. Not for the first time, Dan wonders why. But Phil doesn't give him a chance to ask, he just carries on talking.

"I'm tired afterwards. it takes a lot of energy, or at least it did last time because you had a big build up of magic. I'm hoping it won't be so bad today, and if we keep on top of it." 

"Yeah. Speaking of which, did you wanna…" 

"Sure, yeah. Yes." 

Phil holds out his hands, palms up, fingers relaxed and bent and Dan hesitates only for a moment, rubbing his own hands on his jeans one last time to get rid of any nervous sweat that might be collecting there. He slips his hands into Phil's and now that he's not overcome with fever and on the brink of exploding, he can appreciate how soft Phil's skin is with a clear mind.

Phil looks at him, a close lipped smile and soft eyes aimed at him. "Ready?" He says, quiet so that Dan can only just hear it. 

"Yes," Dan nods. 

" _Eximius_ ," Phil says, loud and clear.

It doesn't hit him out of nowhere this time, but there is still a sucking sensation on his palms, as if something is nudging there, asking permission. Dan isn't sure how he understands what he needs to do but it feels natural when he closes his eyes and concentrates on that part of himself deep down inside, and with the tiniest of pushes, opens the floodgates to his magic. Heat builds between their clasped hands and Dan tingles as the magic makes its way up through him and out through his palm. It crackles, static, electric, fizzing through his veins and out of him like the pressure releasing on a shaken-up can of coke. 

Phil gasps as the magic hits, and Dan can't see him where his eyes are closed, but he feels it when Phil tightens his grip on Dan's hands. 

The feeling builds, once again going past the point of the initial rush of magic and beyond, down to the point of reaching inside Dan, down to that place where he now knows his magic is centered. Phil's breathing has picked up, and Dan is beginning to wonder if he should let go, but he doesn't know what happens if he ends the spell before it's run its course. 

He won't risk hurting Phil for anything. 

The relief Dan feels as the magic drains is refreshing. He can breathe, finally, and he opens his eyes to tell Phil that he can stop, but Phil's eyes are shut, his face twisted, and that blue-green aura dances around their hands. 

"Phil," Dan says, and then when Phil doesn't respond, "Phil, stop." 

Phil groans, and there is a final tug of magic, one last zip of the spell speeding through Dan's body, and Phil's hands are ripped away in a flash of orange, sparks of purple and blue. 

Dan is blinded by the light, wind rushes around his ears and all he can concentrate on is Phil pulling away. He reaches a hand out, clenching at empty air as the magic bursts and begins to settle, until his fist curls in Phil's jumper and his vision clears. He finds himself gripping the front of Phil, leaned over into his space, both of them panting hard. 

"Are you okay?" is the first thing Phil says. 

"Me?" Dan asks, "Are you mad? What about you?"

Phil laughs. He sounds a little giddy, delirious, and he smiles so widely that Dan's grip loosens a little. "I'm fine," he says, chest rising and falling under Dan's hand, "It's not as bad as last time." 

Dan unfurls his fingers, backing away and out of Phil's space. He looks away, because he can't face the happy, wild look on Phil's face and know that once again he's tasted Dan's magic, felt it swim through him. He'd said it felt like Dan, but Dan still doesn't know what that means. 

Dan's eyes land on the plant in the burgundy pot. It's big dark green leaves ringed in cream had been dropping before, but now they are lush and perky. 

"We… the magic brought your plant back to life," Dan says. 

Phil looks over, and his laugh sounds out high and happy. "Oh my god," he says. "I didn't know that was… huh. Interesting." 

"What is?"

"Nothing," Phil says, shaking his head. 

He's keyed up again like last time, but he's also slumping back into the couch and his legs are unfolded from underneath him and they are now stretched out in front. He's reclined, tired, completely drained. 

"You need to sleep," Dan says. "Or have some tea or… something. I don't know, you're the Healer." 

"Are you sure you're okay?" Phil counters. 

"I'm fine. Really. Better, now the magic is gone." 

"Then I just need a nap. You can stay, if you want." 

Dan is taken back by the offer. He doesn't entertain the idea of accepting it and insists that Phil sleeps. He doesn't want to take up any more of Phil's time that he's already going to by agreeing to this process. 

"You can take the Floo back then," Phil says, "If that's okay? It'll get you to the Hog's Head." 

Dan nods, and follows Phil over to the large fireplace and accepts a handful of Floor Powder from the black iron pot that Phil holds out to him. 

"I'll see you next week?" Phil asks. 

"Okay," Dan nods, stepping into the fireplace, "Do you want me to come here?" 

"I'll meet you at Fortescue's again," Phil says, the familiar smile on his face, reaching all the way to his impossibly blue eyes. Dan really does need to ask him about that glamour one of these days. "I could always use an excuse to get ice cream."

Dan agrees, and even though it's been years since he's done this he manages to state his destination clearly enough and throw his Floo Powder without anything going awry. He only has a moment to see Phil waving a hand, to marvel at the fact that he's closer to magic than he's ever been all in the cause of staying away from it, before the green flames engulf him and he's flying away.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are mentions of a grandparent passing away in this chapter. Neither Dan nor Phil's, but if that kind of thing bothers you I just wanted to warn for it.

His phone vibrates on the coffee table. Dan doesn't dive for it, he continues making tea in his kitchen, stirring it slowly and watching the liquid go round and round; a mini whirlpool in his cup. 

He sighs, and the sound echoes off the tiles behind the counter. He's alone in his flat and while that is something he usually enjoys more than anything else, the enforced loneliness is getting to him just a bit. 

He's arranged with his job that he's going to work from home for a while. He blames the supposed gas leak and says that he isn't feeling well. Funnily enough, they barely question it and he's allowed to transcribe the case files he receives in the post a few days later in peace. 

He feels fine. He's felt fine since the de-pressurisation, at least physically. 

When he finally makes it back to his couch, the light already dying on a work day he spent there, he finds a text from Reena on his phone. 

**Reena, 7:02pm**  
Me, you, shots.

He sighs. He knows it's ridiculous, but he can't shake off the creeping anxious feeling he gets at the suggestion. He can't stop picturing Leon on the bed, still and silent, and replying over and over to himself that it was him that it was all his fault. Dan is the reason that man is permanently scarred, and de-pressurised or not, he's scared that he might do it again. 

**Dan, 7:04pm**  
not tonight thanks i still feel really shit

He knows it isn't feasible to hide out in his apartment forever. He still has to go and see Phil next week to make sure that he continues to be less of a threat than he would otherwise, especially now that Phil's fate is woven in with his own. He can't bear the thought of hurting someone, of sending Phil to Azkaban along with him just because he's done something stupid like offer to keep an eye on Dan. 

Why did Phil have to vouch for him? 

Dan closes the lid of his laptop and concentrates on sipping his tea. He focuses on that, and nothing else, willing away the guilty nauseous thoughts gnawing at his brain. It isn't really working, so while he'd asked her not to, he is a little relieved when Reena opens the door to his flat anyway. 

He isn't surprised, either. Reena isn't really known for taking rejection lightly. 

"You said you were fine," she says. 

A bottle of tequila hits his coffee table with an audible thump and Dan looks up at her, startled. He nearly spills his tea down his front. 

"I'm just tired," Dan says. 

"Aren't you working from home?" 

Dan nods. He's still surrounded by the case files, messy and tipped over into a fan of paper, so there is no use denying it. 

"You haven't even gotten changed out of your pyjamas," Reena says, "There is no way you've had a hard day." 

"I just had a lot to do," Dan says, "And I did inhale smoke not that long ago." 

Reena eyes him, critically. It's then that he notices the pink rings around her eyes, the chapped piece of skin on her bottom lip that she runs her tongue over. She looks tired too, like she's had a hard day. Not that she'll ever admit it. 

"But if you want to hang out, we can," Dan concedes. 

"Damn right." 

Reena picks up the bottle from the table and squeezes bodily into the space beside him on the couch. She uses her pointed elbows and rounded knees to move him out of the way until she's sat in the gap between Dan and the arm of the couch, unscrewing the lid on the tequila. 

He shifts, and he abandons his cup of tea on the table because he has a feeling he isn't going to be drinking it now. A stack of case files at the foot of the couch falls over and he makes no attempt to pick them up. 

Reena tips the bottle back and her throat bobs as she swallows heavily. she sighs when she's done, and holds the bottle out to Dan. 

He doesn't take it straight away. He thinks of the gentle slide away from control it might bring him, how it could mean disaster if he has one sip too many. It's heavy when he lifts it, the glass cool against his palm, and the small sip he takes burns on the way down. 

When he's done he doesn't pass it back to her straight away, but she holds a hand out for it. 

"What's up," he says. 

Her red-rimmed eyes blink at him. she's not wearing eyeliner today, her bare lashes are still thick and dark, and the deep brown of her irises glints as he rolls her eyes. 

Her long fingers tug the bottle from his grip, and her round face, scrunches, her plump chin wobbling momentarily before she takes another drink.

"No," she says, "that's not happening." 

"You can talk to me," Dan says.

She shoves the bottle out again, right under his nose, and waggles it back and forth so that the liquid in is sloshes. A drop shoots up out of the neck and lands on Dan's nose. It smells strong and acidic. 

Dan does ease it from her grasp but he doesn't take a sip straight away. Instead, he waits. 

"It's not like you tell me anything," Reena says. 

Dan shrugs, "I also don't come to your house with tequila to drink away the stuff I don't want to talk about." 

Reena chews on her bottom lip. She balls her hand into a fist on her lap until her knuckles turn white and Dan hears her sigh. He looks away, granting her a bit of space to think about whether she wants to share. He lifts the bottle instead, but pauses before he sips as she opens her mouth. 

"Dan," she says, and Dan doesn't think he's ever heard her voice so small and pleading.

Reena doesn't ask for things, she demands them, or else just takes them without saying anything at all. It's one of the things Dan likes most about her, she doesn't mess about or play games, or make him feel scared or ashamed of all the things she isn't saying. She just takes him at face value and expects him to do the same. 

This might be the first time Dan has ever pushed the issue, and he's regretting it already.

"Can we just..." Reena says, and slips the bottle from his fingers.

"Alright," Dan nods. 

Reena tips the bottle back again and this time when she passes it over to him he doesn't pause before swallowing a quick mouthful himself. 

It's probably a bad idea, but Dan has made plenty of bad choices in the pursuit of avoiding things that hurt him, so helping Reena do the same feels like the right thing to do. 

Dan stays true to his word. They trade the bottle back and forth and Dan takes sips without asking her for an explanation. 

He winds up with her legs stretched out across his lap, his head swimming and tipped backwards onto the couch. 

The world feels off. He can feel the energy swirling within him but it isn't anything like the wandlack pressure. It's more like there is something unsettled inside of him trying to get out. 

"Do you ever feel like you aren't normal?" Dan says to the ceiling. 

Reena's body shifts and he can hear her swallow. He has a hand wrapped around her ankle and she wiggles her foot to get his attention. He rolls his head, looking over to her. 

She's leaning on her hand, the other holding the bottle close to her face. She considers him, and then holds the bottle out. 

He's not sure he can handle anymore, and his hands feel thick and fuzzy, so he doesn't take it from her. 

"What the fuck is normal?" she asks. 

_Muggle_ Dan's inner monologue supplies, but he doesn't say it out loud. 

"I don't know," Dan says. His cheeks feel hot, his lips are moving slower than he intends but he doesn't think he's quite slurring yet. It's close, but not yet. "I just know that I'm not it." 

Reena's eyes flutter shut. She's still got her head on her hand and Dan can see the dark circles underneath her eyes. She looks smaller than normal, she's got fishnets on underneath a pair of baggy, ripped, light blue jeans and a cropped black sweater with long sleeves. She looks comfortable, but Dan knows there is something lingering there, a sadness she isn't owning up to. 

"Fuck that," she says, suddenly. "Normal is boring. Why would you want to be normal?" 

Dan takes the bottle from her hand. He grip has loosened and he's convinced she's going to drop it, so he's saving his couch for the most part. He doesn't drink any more, he's drunk enough, but he does tap his fingernails against the glass and listen to the quiet tinkling sound. 

Dan considers why he wants to be normal. Why he wants to be _muggle_. But it's all too big of a feeling for how little space he has next to the tequila sloshing around his brain. He wants to give her an answer, because he thinks that she deserves one when she's asked him questions and she's obviously so sad, but Dan can't think of one that will explain how it is he feels about the whole thing. 

"Dunno," he settles for, which isn't even close. 

Reena's hand reaches out, and Dan thinks she's aiming for the bottle with closed eyes so he tries to move it into her path, but she knocks it aside and instead presses her palm flat to his chest. She blinks her eyes open and looks at him intently. 

"You're fine as you are," she says, "You're a huge nerd, and totally emotionally closed off but… you know, same. I like that you aren't like all those other idiots wandering around. I wish you were happier, though." 

"I'm not happy?"

"You seem sad," she says, "a lot of the time. Not that you have an obligation to be happy, I've got no interest in you being one of those shiny happy people. But… you know. I don't want you to be sad either." 

"I—" Dan starts, and then stops, because he is a bit sad a lot of the time. 

"You need more friends," Reena says, dropping her hand to the couch and still not reaching for the tequila. Dan thinks they're probably done with it now, which is probably good considering they've drank half the bottle by this point and they're both drunk enough to be having this conversation. "You need someone who isn't emotionally stunted." 

Dan's thought briefly land on Phil. Phil's emotions are visible on his face always, or in the way his hands move, in the sparks of his wand against his thigh. He's an open book for the most part, and Dan is a deep dark cave of secrets he's holding on to tight even though no one is really interested in them. 

He's not sure he and Phil are really friends, but he might be the closest thing Dan has got that isn't Reena. 

"You're sad," Dan says, trying to avoid that part of the conversation too. Reena must notice, because she too is an expert in avoidance, but she doesn't call him out on it. 

"I have reason to be," she sighs. 

She readjusts herself so that she's sat up a little straighter, and runs a finger under each eye even though there is no make up there to be smeared. 

"And I don't?" 

"Shit," she says, "Sorry. No, that's not what I meant. I just—" she bites down on her lip and shakes her head. 

Dan sighs and leans forward over her legs to abandon the bottle on the floor. He can't find the bottle cap, but it hardly matters. "It's fine." 

"I am sad," she says, and it surprises Dan that she's just come out with it. 

"Yeah," Dan says, for lack of anything else. 

There is a wet smacking sound as Reena bites down on her lower lip and then lets it go. She swallows and swipes the tiny hairs away from her forehead. 

"Look," she says, "I don't want to make a big thing out of it, okay? I don't want your pity, and I don't want you to get like a sd look on your face or anything." 

"I won't," Dan says, quietly. "Promise." 

"My grandma died," she says. 

"Oh." 

"She was old, it wasn't anything traumatic it was just… she got old. They told me last week she wasn't feeling great, and then… She died." 

"I'm sorry, Ree." 

"You said you wouldn't do that," she warns, and Dan snaps his mouth shut. 

"I'm going to go home for the funeral," she continues, ignoring him now, "but it kinda sucks that I wasn't there when it happened." 

"That's not your fault," Dan says, "it isn't like you could have just… I don't know, teleported back to America the minute you found out she was ill." 

Reena bites down on her lip again and this time it's because it quivers just a bit. "Give me the bottle," she says. 

"Ree... " Dan whispers.

Reena holds her hand out insistently. She's shaking, just slightly. Her eyes are red, but she isn't crying. She's holding it together. 

"Bottle," she says. 

Dan lifts it off the floor and passes it to her even though it's definitely not the healthy way to deal with any of this. 

"My grandma is the only person that…" Dan sighs, "I get it. It sucks. And I am sorry, not because I pity you or anything. And yes, yes I promise I'll shut up in a second but I just want to say that I'm glad you told me. You don't have to be alone." 

Reena passes him the bottle and then folds inward. She curls up into his body, her knees at an awkward angle, fishnets poking out of the large rip. She heaves a shaky breath, and she might have started crying, but Dan doesn't want to call her out by doing anything as obvious as looking at her. Instead, he takes the bottle and does another shot right from the neck of it, ill-advised as it is. 

"You don't either," she says into the fabric of his shirt. 

Dan doesn't respond. He doesn't have any more words to say, so he just lets her rest against him, puts his arm around her shoulders and pretends she isn't crying. They finish the rest of the bottle, and it rolls away from them empty and echoing, but Dan doesn't let her go. 

They share their pain, by barely sharing it at all. They exist in it beside each other, both with their own secrets and their own way of dealing with things. They huddle together, and keep each other company and in the end, that's all they really need.


	10. Chapter Ten

Phil's ice cream is bright green with shimmering golden berries in it. He's licking along the side of a cone, the scoop of ice cream so large it's threatening to fall off entirely. Dan isn't sure if it's magic or just pure dumb luck that means it hasn't. 

"Hi!" Phil says as Dan approaches him. 

His face lights up, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening with the smile on his mouth. He's got ice cream on the end of his nose so instead of replying, Dan reaches out to swipe at it with his thumb. 

"Oh," Phil says around a sharp intake of breath, "thanks."

"How you doing?" Dan asks. 

"Good. Oh wait, here." 

Phil passes him a paper cup, piled high with fluffy peaks of soft yellow ice cream. 

"I just got you butterbeer flavour," Phil says, "I wasn't sure what you liked, but everyone likes butterbeer, right?" 

Dan takes the tub from Phil and is pleased to find that the ice cream hasn't melted even a little bit. He does like butterbeer, he hasn't had it in years but he does remember it being nice the one time he'd tried it. 

He'd gone into Hogsmeade all of once to sample it. By the time Hogsmeade trips were permitted, Dan had mostly been trying to keep a low profile at school, retreating from social interactions with other witches and wizards. He knew, even by third year, that he didn't want to ingrain himself too much in the magical lifestyle. 

His mum had signed his permission slip with a pinched look on her face, and Dan hadn't been able to stop remembering it every time he thought about going with the other kids. It had nothing to do with the other kids, and everything to do with him. They had invited him along in a sort of off-hand kind of way, they thought him odd and mostly ignored him, but they were never outright awful, just mildly indifferent. 

He was in Slytherin, so maybe it would have been different in other houses, or maybe he should have expected it to be worse. But by all accounts, alienated kids were treated a lot better when Dan was at Hogwarts than they had been historically.

"Thanks," Dan says. 

There's a spoon stuck in the side of the cup so he lifts a mouthful of ice cream and tastes it, appraisingly. 

"Good?" Phil says.

"Yeah it's..." Dan feels thirteen. He's alone in Hogsmeade and a solitary Ravenclaw waves at him because he's also sporting a Hogwarts scarf, albeit of a different colour. 

Dan doesn't wave back, doesn't encourage the making of a new friend. He simply sips a butterbeer at a quiet table, and then trudges back to school with an ever-present scowl. 

Dan thinks he probably came across as a bit of a dick in school. He didn't really make friends, he kept his distance. But it was just easier, he reasoned at the time, because making magical friends didn't really gel with his plans to leave it all behind him once he was no longer obligated to attend that school. 

"It's good," Dan finishes, finally. 

Phil blinks, and he opens his mouth as if to say something more but then seems to think better of it. 

Dan continues to eat his ice cream, and Phil's melts so that it is going to drip down his hand, but he spots it in time and licks it with a flat tongue. Dan follows the movement with his eyes, but he isn't quite sure why. He diverts his attention back to his rapidly emptying ice cream cup, because the last thing he needs to do is complicate this already very complicated situation with all of that. 

They stay stood outside of Fortescue's on the cobbled pavement just watching the passers by and eating ice cream until Phil's cone has been devoured and Dan is holding his empty cup. It occurs to Dan that when they should be getting on with the serious business of ensuring Dan is no longer a threat to himself or others, they have taken time out to eat ice cream together instead. 

"Ready to go?" Phil asks, pulling Dan from his thoughts. 

"Yeah," Dan nods. 

Phil flicks out his wand and disappears the cup in Dan's hand. Dan flexes his hand, the magic fizzes, making his skin feel like it has goosebumps without actually reacting at all. 

"Sorry," Phil says, seeing the expression on Dan's face, "force of habit." 

"It's…" Dan flexes his hand one more time and then shoves it into his pocket so that he doesn't have to think about it any more. "It's fine." 

They walk in the direction of the apparition point and things continue to feel a little awkward. Dan hadn't intended for that to happen, he doesn't want to make Phil feel bad about using magic, he's trying to get used to it but it can still feel a little jarring after being away from it for so long. It's mostly because of the weird goosebump-like sensation on his fingertips, rather than anything else. 

It feels different than his own magic, but also kind of familiar. Like he's remembering something that he's forgotten but can't work out what that is. 

"You seem a bit off today," Phil says after walking together for a few minutes. 

"I do?" 

"Yeah… sort of, I dunno, flat?" 

Dan still has his hands in his pockets. He bundles his hands into fists and shoves them deeper into his jacket, trying to bundle himself up. 

"I'm alright," Dan says. 

"You sure?" 

Dan sighs. Phil's eyes feel heavy on the side of his face, and Dan turns away, looking at the opposite side of the street and the odd, mismatched shops with their colourful awnings and magically moving window displays. 

"It's not a medical problem," Dan says, "the Wandlack Pressure is at bay. I'm fine." 

A hand lands on Dan's shoulder, and Phil shoves him lightly. Dan doesn't lose his footing, but it's a near thing. His body rocks sideways and he tears his hands from his pocket, half to stabilize himself but also with the urge to push Phil back gently and watch him waver as well. 

"That wasn't what I meant," Phil says, eyebrows raised. 

Dan finds that a smile is on his face, the muscles creaky, unused. Reena and her tequila had been a welcome distraction, but the isolation inside his apartment, the uncomfortable knowledge that he's not fit to be out of the house if it isn't in these secret part of the world he has no desire to be in, has been weighing on him. There is something vastly unfair about magic being the only thing that will protect him from the consequences of not using magic. 

"Right. Well, I'm still fine." 

Phil has his wand out of his pocket and he's tapping it against his thigh. There are sparks of magic erupting from the end, an entire rainbow of them. They aren't touching Dan at all but he can feel the phantom sensation of it on the back of his hand like a memory. 

"Do you know you do that?" Dan asks. 

"Do what?" 

Dan waves a hand in the direct of Phil's wand and Phil glances down and then stops the movement abruptly. His face comes over all scrunched and embarrassed, and he shoves his wand back into his pocket. 

"Sorry," Phil says, "I don't realise I'm doing it half the time. I know it's annoying." 

"No it's—" Dan breaks off, because he doesn't know what it is. It should bother him, because magic bothers him for the moet part, but there's something about the way Phil's wand fits in his hand, the way the action is natural and unthinking. Dan shrugs, "Whatever. It's fine." 

"Do you know you do _that_?" Phil says. 

"What do I do?" 

They're at the apparition point now and Phil holds out his arm so that Dan can take hold of it. The fabric of the robes Phil is wearing today is soft, but textured under Dan's palm. 

There is a sucking sensation, the feeling of being forced through that tiny, long tube, and then Dan is once again in Phil's living room. A burgundy pot with a lush green pot still sits on the small side table, happy and healthy, but the rest of the plants are in the same shape as before, only this time there is a small green watering can on the coffee table. 

"You say things are fine a lot," Phil says, picking up the conversation as if they haven't just travelled hundreds of miles in a split second, "even when I suspect they are not fine."

"But I am fine." Dan sits down on Phil's couch without being invited, and Phil points his wand in the direction of the kettle without offering Dan tea out loud. Maybe a routine is being established, maybe they're both just edging around each other trying to avoid this devolving into a fight. The last thing Dan needs is to start an argument with the one person that can help him. Where would that leave him? 

He fixes a smile to his face and turns it to where Phil is in his little kitchen. "I've just been in the house a lot lately, I guess I was just a little stir crazy. But I'm f— I'm okay." 

"Sounds like the kind of thing that could get a person down," Phil says. 

He's got his back turned, so he doesn't even see the effort Dan put in to maintaining his smile, so Dan doesn't bother to any more. Phil is making tea, the tinkling sound of a spoon on the edge of a cup. It's slow, methodical, Phil is doing it by hand. 

Dan isn't sure if that's for his benefit, but it would be presumptuous to ask.

Dan takes a resolute breath and rests a hand on the back of the couch. His body angled towards the kitchen even though Phil is turned away from him. "It can be." 

The mug is hot when Phil finally passes him the tea and joins him on the couch. They adopt a similar position to last time, closer than they need to be for the conversation, but hinting at what is to come, the reason why Dan is here. 

"I'm alone a lot," Dan says. 

There is no reason for him to be saying that, and he braces for Phil's pity which he's sure is coming, but Phil's face remains passive and unaffected save for a small, reassuring smile. 

"By choice?" 

"Kind of. Moreso at the moment." 

"You're not a threat," Phil says. He places a warm hand on Dan's arm, skin hot from the mug of coffee he's holding so it seeps through Dan's shirt, making him shiver.

"I am," Dan argues, "A bit." 

"I don't believe that." 

Phils juts his chin out and squares his shoulders. He bends one leg at the knee and rests is on the couch. He's all folded up like he so often is, small yet long. 

"As long as we keep doing this I'm safe, right?" Dan grips his mug so hard his fingers ache, pushing nails into the ceramic until his fingertips burn with the heat and he has to stop. "But what if… I'm just scared that it will happen anyway." 

Phil's lips purse into a thoughtful pout, he inclines his head a fraction and taps his index and middle finger on the side of his own mug. "I don't like the idea of you shutting yourself away just because you've got a medical condition that makes it difficult." 

He doesn't include that said medical condition is only a problem because of Dan's refusal to do magic, and Dan appreciates it. 

"What other choice do I have?" Dan asks, voice quiet. "Leon is scarred because of me, he has to live with that. And it was a lucky escape, if the Aurors hadn't been there to intervene it could have gone a hell of a lot worse. I don't want to do that to anyone else." 

"If anything were to happen the Aurors would always be there, that's how it works." 

Phil is telling him things he already knows, things he's gone over in his head time and time again since it happened. It doesn't change anything. 

"I don't want any of this," Dan says. 

It's truer than he wants it to be. Phil still has a hand on Dan's arm, just resting is there like he's forgotten, but Dan's arm shifts as a bolt of pure anger runs through him and Phil's fingers twitch to life, squeezing again gently. 

"Hey," he says, "listen, I don't know why you don't use magic, and— no. Don't look like that I'm not going to ask." 

Dan looks away, shifts in his seat to try and put some space between them. He's uncomfortable with this, any explanation he might be able to give wouldn't make sense, he's not really sure it makes sense to him. HE just knows that… he can't. 

"But I can promise you," Phil continues, and at this point he's been touching Dan's arms for an inordinately long time. Too long to be socially acceptable under usual circumstances. But Phil has shared his magic, Phil knows what it feels like. So maybe it's different for them. "I won't let anything happen. I'll help you." 

"Why?" Dan asks, struck with a need to know so deep he feels he might break if he doesn't know. For the first time in days he allows himself to raise his voice, to shout, to slip just a little bit out of control. His blood pounds in his ears and he can feel the magic stirring within him, aware of its presence as he always is these days. "Why are you helping me? Why did you vouch for me? You're doing sketchy magic usually reserved for weddings with a person you don't know. Why?" 

Phi's hand lets go of his arm. Phi's whole body deflated, folds inward on itself, shoulder's sagging. Dan closes his eyes for a second so that he doesn't have to watch. 

"Sorry," Dan says, "I'm not as angry as I sound. I'm grateful, really, I just… I don't understand." 

"Do you feel better?" Phil asks. 

"I—" Dan cuts himself off before he can answer because he does, the magic is shaken up inside him and it scares him to death in case it bursts out of him again, but some of the lingering pent up nerves have dissipated. "A bit." 

"You can't repress everything," Phil says. "Magic and emotions, they go hand in hand. You're already… limiting your magic, so you can't disengage from your feelings as well. You'll just wind up feeling awful." 

"I don't know if I… I'm scared." 

It takes a lot for Dan to admit that. He doesn't want to hand over that knowledge to Phil nad have it used against him. Not that he thinks Phil would use it against him, but he's been using the self preservation tactic of keeping everything pushed down to avoid judgment for so many years that it's become the only way he can deal with anything. 

"You don't seem scared." 

"Hm," Dan hums, thoughtfully. "I guess it's… it's different here. With you. I don't have to keep it under wraps as much, I guess. You make everything better." 

Phil's lips part, and his eyes widen the tiniest amount. His fingers falter on his mug and he only rights it in time to prevent the liquid within from spilling on his trousers. 

"Because you're a healer," Dan adds, hastily. 

"Sure, yeah. Of course." Phil sits up straighter, transfers his mug to one hand and then puts it on the table. "Did you wanna do the…" 

"Right. Yeah. Sure, let's… do that." 

The air feels thick with an unnamed tension as Dan holds his hands out. Phil joins them at the fingers first, and then palm to palm, and Dan can feel the frisson of Magic like static. 

"Ready?" Phil asks. 

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" 

"I'm fine," Phil says. 

His face is intent, concentrated. He isn't sitting still, he moves minutely, repositioning in tiny increments. 

"Then I am too," Dan says. 

Phil takes a breath, stills his body and then, " _Eximius_."

He tightens his grip on Phil's hand and the same deep, internal sucking sensation happens low in his core. Magic swirls up and out of him, and Phil gasps as it hits. The air between then lights up with purple-green and Dan can taste pumpkin on his tongue.

Dan doesn't close his eyes. He doesn't shy away, instead he looks at Phil's face. Phil's eyes are closed, there is a faint line between his brows and at the corners of his eyes, but his mouth is slack and parted, pink tongue darting into the corner of hip lips, resting there. 

Dan is captivated by the way that he looks, the connection of their hands where the magic is flowing. As energy fizzes around them Dan has the errant thought, the tug of a tiny thought in the back of his mind, that is might be nice to kiss Phil while this happens. To see if magic can pass there too. 

He shakes it away. The pull of magic from within is fast, and hard, and Dan can sense it when it starts to get too much. It's less of a rush of relief to him this time, which is probably due to him having less urgency, less magic to siphon off, but it's still a lot of Phil. 

"Phil," Dan says, like he did last time. 

And like last time, Phil doesn't respond. 

Dan doesn't want to hurt Phil by ending this too soon, but he can feel the stream of magic joining them and the way his body is open to it, allowing it to flow. He has to give permission. Phil had said that in order for this to work, Dan has to give permission for it to happen so what if he… doesn't. 

Phil's grip on his hands is strong, static and electric magic zipping between them and Dan concentrates on his side of the connection, of pulling back on it. He closes his eyes, drawing back on the flow of magic reaching up out of the deepest part of him, and it starts to slow. 

Phil makes a noise like he doesn't understand what is going on and gasps again. 

"Dan!" he says. 

Dan has tugged too far, what was a suking sensation on his own skin is now reversed and Dan is filled with a beautiful, serene feeling. It feels like laying on warm grass, the heady scent of earth and dew filling his nostrils and the taste of pumpkin on his tongue is joined by one honey-sweet and rich. 

Dan gasps, and Phil's hands are ripped away with a loud, determined sound. Dan opens his eyes just in time for light to explode around the room, the plant on the windowsill and the ones on the fridge rustle and shake and bloom instantly. 

"Fuck," Dan says. 

They are both breathing heavily, hands in their laps. 

"What…" Phil says, pausing to catch his breath. "What did you—?" 

"Sorry," Dan says, "I thought… it was going on too long, I could feel it, you'd drained enough and I didn't want you to get… I didn't want it to be too much." 

"Are you alright? I think that it… did you feel…" 

Dan nods. He flops back against the arm of the couch, bone tired and aching in his joints like he's been out walking all day. 

"Was that you?" Dan says, "was that your magic?" 

"Did you feel it?" Phil asks, without answering Dan's question. 

"Hm. Yeah, I… I think I did." 

Phil reaches out to press a palm against the side of Dan's neck. He reaches for his wand and raises it up over Dan's chest. "Are you alright? Let me just—" 

Dan puts a hand around Phil's wrist and forces him to lower his wand, "I'm fine, Phil." 

Phil opens his mouth to object but Dan chuckles and shakes his head wearily. 

"I mean it this time," Dan says, "I think any of your magic that started to come back to me dissipated at the end. It's currently making the flowers on the fridge dance." 

Phil looks over at them and smiles. They are dancing, swaying from left to right, merry in their new colours. 

"You look tired," Phil says. 

"Yeah," Dan agrees, "I am. A bit. Haven't been sleeping too well." 

The curve of Phil's mouth is still lovely. His lips are pink and the dart of his tongue appears every so often when he talks. Dan doesn't want to look too long or too hard because Phil might notice, but he finds his attention coming back to it time and time again. 

It might be nice to kiss Phil during the spell, but it might also just be nice to kiss him at other times too. 

"Stay," Phil says. "You can sleep here." 

As far as bad ideas go, spending the night in a magical house with the oddest wizard he's ever met is probably not the worst one Dan's ever had, but it is still a bad idea. 

Dan is great at following through on bad ideas. 

"Okay," he says, "I'll stay."


	11. Chapter Eleven

Waking on a couch is always a bit disorientating, waking on an unfamiliar one is even worse. 

There's a blue-green quilt thrown over him, and what is obviously a warming charm working at his feet. He stirs, and the spell dissipates. 

There's a rhythmic tapping sound from the window and Dan squints in the golden-morning light to see a ruffled, impatient owl rapping its beak on the glass.

Dan's brain comes back to him slowly. His body still feels achy from the night before, but it's a good kind of ache. Less bone-tired and more like he's done something worth doing. The ghost of something thick and honeyed is on his tongue, so he throws back the blanket and crawls out from underneath it to let the owl in. Anything to distract himself from that. 

The owl swoops into the room, dropping the prophet on the coffee table and landing on a precariously stacked pile of books. It's head cocks to the side, and it hoots softly. 

"You want paying," Dan says to it, knowing from experience that mail owls have a way of understanding him. It feels weird anyway. "Sorry, I don't have any wizard money." 

The owl hoots again and stretches its wings. Dan takes a step back, conscious that this could be one of those disgruntled types, perhaps he's in for a good pecking until he gives up the knuts he owes for a paper he hadn't ordered. 

Phil appears at that moment, thankfully. He's slow and sleepily shuffling over, but he puts a hand into the pocket of his pyjamas and puts coins in the leather pouch attached to the owl's leg. 

"Go on," Phil says, ghosting his hand over the soft feathers of the brown owl. 

The bird pushes his head briefly into Phil's palm, hooting softly, contentedly, before taking off out of the window. 

"I thought it was going to kill me," Dan says.

Phil looks over to him, a serene smile on his face. He looks pleasantly ruffled, clearly having just rolled out of bed. His hair is stood on end and Dan wants to reach out and put it back into place.

Instead, he drops back on the couch and shoves his hands under his thighs. 

"Thanks for the warning charm," he says. 

"I hope it wasn't… it gets cold in here." 

His voice is deeper in the mornings, rough with disuse. He's still Phil, still the cheerful, clumsy, odd healer he always is, but there is something muted about him in the early golden light. Something subdued and soft.

"It was okay," Dan assures him.

Phil looks relieved. His face brightens, somewhat, as though he'd been worrying about it. 

Phil offers him a hot drink again, and Dan sits back down on the couch. He fusses with the blanket, folding it into a neat square and laying it on the back, he wants to be the kind of house guest that tidies up after himself. 

Dan puts his shoes back on, fishing them out where he'd abandoned them near the base of the couch. He fidgets, running hands over he knees and changing position as he sits, trying to get comfortable. He feels restless, for some reason.

Phil barely seems to notice as he hands Dan a mug and drops down onto the couch. A splash of coffee lands on the front of his shirt and Dan smiles in a way than can be described as nothing other than fond. Phil picks up The Prophet and rests it on his knee.

"You're chatty," Dan says.

"Not a morning person," Phil says, "sorry."

"Isn't there some sort of spell for that?" 

"Hm," Phil nods, "but that's cheating."

Dan laughs at him, ignoring the fact that he just suggested that Phil use magic, rather than hiding from it. The ghost of honey flits across his subconscious.

"I should probably go," Dan says. 

"Oh," Phil says.

He's still sitting, holding his cup. He has one hand wrapped around the handle, not threaded through it the way you'd expect, and the other cupped over the body of it. He looks sleepy, and adorable, hunched into the warmth of his drink, not yet awake. 

Dan has the urge to lean forward, to be in Phil's space, feel the warmth of the coffee on his breath and-- What?

"Yeah." 

Dan walks towards the fireplace. He can do this bit now, it doesn't feel weird. A lot of things don't feel weird here. 

"Do you wanna come out with me tomorrow?" Phil says. 

"What?" 

"Tomorrow," Phil says. "I mean... not just with me. With some friends. We go out for drinks, you should come." 

"Uh--" 

"No pressure," Phil says. His face is doing that smile thing again. "I just thought... well you said you didn't go out much, and this is a wizarding pub so you could... I dunno. I thought it might make you feel less scared of something happening." 

Dan considers it. Out of habit he wants to say no, to stay far outside of the wizarding world. But that hasn't really been working for him, has it? 

"No one will ask you to do magic," Phil says when Dan hesitates. 

"Right."

"Promise," Phil says, "It'll just be some drinks with good people. It would be good for you to get out of the house." 

"Is that your medical opinion?"Dan asks, smirking. 

Phil shrugs, "I meant it as a friend," he says, "not a Healer. But, sure."

Dan feels his face go pink, and he looks down at his shoes. "I'll go," he says. He's not sure whether its the rising tension that makes him agree, or if he really wants to go. 

Either way, Phil's face lights up. His hand leaves his cup, flexes at his sleeve as if to reach for his wand, but then stops. 

"Meet me at Fortescue's" Phil says. 

"You'll turn into an ice cream," Dan warns, some levity back in his voice. 

Phil's shoulders shake as he chuckles, "And then," he proclaims, "I would eat myself." 

Dan's eyebrow twitches, raising slightly. The innuendo sits between them, neither picking it up, but sharing a loaded smile all the same. 

Dan needs to leave. 

He's half asleep, veins swimming with magic, some of it his and some of it, he suspects, Phil's. It's making him loopy. 

They say their goodbyes and Dan steps into the fireplace. Green flames lick up around him, and air rushes around his ears.

* * *

The knowledge that he's agreed to go out with a group of magical folk stays with him until he gets home. 

It doesn't sit twisted and awkward in his chest they way he expects it to, but it does seem to be in his feet, driving him towards the wardrobe with the warped handle. To the box in the back and the rolled up green and silver scarf.

The wand is dark and pulses with a frission of energy as he takes it out. He picks it up this time, feel the shape of it in his hand. He expects it to be cold, unused and neglected, but the wood is warm in his palm. It pulls on something inside, tugs down deep at that place that he has come to associate with the centre of his magic, the place that stirs and twists when Phil tugs during the spell. 

It fits into the curves of his hand, shape unchanged but with the sense that it has warped into the contours of his body. 

He remembers going to pick it out. That first rush of magic, like finally becoming acquainted with something he'd always known about himself. Like the first time he kissed a boy and thought _Oh. Alright._

His mum had stood behind him in the shop, gasped softly as the magic flowed and boxes went flying in a shower of sparks. Gold ones, he remembers. 

Nothing like the multicolored ones from Phil's wand, somewhat like the glow on his palms before disaster strikes.

His mum had gasped aloud, her eyes wide and hands shaking. Dan had gripped the wand tight, afraid she'd make him put it back in the slim box and leave it there. He'd wanted it, then. 

She didn't. Instead, she handed over unfamiliar coins and ushered Dan back out onto cobbled streets, wand tucked into his fist. Her eyes slide sideways to the wand every few seconds, hesitant and resigned, like this was something final, an eventuality she couldn't control. 

Dan chucks the wand back in the scarf, folds it up hastily, and shoves it into the box at the back of the cupboard. 

He gives the box one final look, faintly wondering if the pulse of magic he can feel is real, or if he's just imagining it. 

It isn't a sugared-honey taste he's experiencing now, it's something sour, memories rushing over him. 

Without really thinking about it, he slides his phone from his pocket, surprised to see that it still has some battery even though he hadn't charged it overnight. 

_were you scared when i got my wand_

Dan doesn't know why he sends it, what on earth possesses him to open this conversation with his mum after all this time. It can't do any good, Dan already knows how she feels about it all, but something Phil said is echoing in his head. Over and over. 

Magic and emotion go hand in hand, You can't repress everything forever. 

Dan doesn't think he's repressing anything, exactly, it's more that he's made a calculated decision, summed up the consequences of magic and decided that overall, it just isn't worth it. 

The dying affection in his mum's eyes, the alienation he feels, distant and different from the world he walks in. It has never been worth it, to face the fear his magic brings and continue using it anyway. 

But sometimes, Dan wonders. 

About whether everything is as bad as it seems, whether he might have gotten it wrong. It's been years since he touched on the subject, in fact he can't ever think of a time when he voluntarily brought up the subject of magic with his mum. It's like a large looming things that exists, the elephant in the room everyone knows about but no one will mention. 

so he wonders, what would happen if he did. 

His phone ring. 

"You didn't have to ring me." 

"Well..." his mum sighs into the receiver. "What's going on, Dan?"

Alot, Dan thinks. So much had happened but I don't know how to tell you any of it. 

"Nothing," he settles for. 

"Do you want to explain why you sent that text out of the blue?" 

She doesn't sound angry. There is something pinched in her tone, like the words are creeping out through a tight jaw, but it's absent of the rage or disappointment Dan might have expected. 

"I dunno," Dan says. "don't worry about it. It was just a random thought I had." 

"Hm." 

She hums quietly, and then there is a stretch of silence Dan doesn't know how to fill.He's not trying to keep her on the hook, he doesn't want to force this conversation any more than she wants to have it, but he's here now. And he wonders. 

"I think perhaps I was scared," his mum says. "For you." 

"For me?" 

There is a rustling on the other end, the click of the glass door to the living room opening and then the creak of the sofa as she sits down. Familiar sounds, of a childhood home he hates going back to. Haunted halls full of memories, a place he doesn't fit and never has. 

He looks up at the room around him from his position on the floor. He's still in front of the wardrobe, the doors still open. The box peers out at him from the dark and he realises that he doesn't belong here either. Not really. 

"You were such an imaginative little boy," she says, and the words curl around a slow smile. "You had this way of... you felt things deeply, and I often didn't know how to keep up with your flights of fancy, or with the way you sometimes got sullen and quiet." 

"Mum..."

"You were always a little different. Such a unique kid in a lot of ways and it's hard as a parent, to see that. On the one hand, I knew I had to let you be yourself but the world is so... it can be so horrible, Dan, and I knew what it could do to kids like you. I guess I..." She clears her throat, voice rising out of the whisper it had descended into. "When the... the _magic_ thing started, I didn't--"

Her words stop, and now Dan is holding his breath, clenching a fist on the top of his crossed ankles. 

"I knew you were scared," Dan says. "I didn't want to be different, you know." 

"Oh Dan," his mum says, sniffing. "But you are. and I knew there was a chance you would be, I knew about your dad. But he was always... there was always a separation between our family and all of that." 

"You knew?" 

"Yes," she says, "It was a shock at first, of course, but your dad was always very... he kept me out of it for the most part, and it wasn't like he used magic a whole lot. It wasn't like he was _around_ a lot."

"I remember." 

"When you... well. I thought he might help, I asked him to, to talk to you and explain what was happening because I didn't know how. But he wouldn't." 

Dan flashes back to shouting, to arguments and listening to the sound of his mum's strained, angry voice in the hallway from his position sat on the topmost stair. 

"I was wrong," she says. 

It hits him in the gut, sharp and twisting. He didn't think that this was how the conversation was going to go, he didn't want any of this when he woke up this morning but there is a bubbling anticipation, something simmering like hope low in his stomach. 

"What?" 

"I think... I know it doesn't excuse anything, and I can't do anything to fix it now, but I was. Your dad was... well. Not the best, I suppose. And I think I blamed the magic for that, so seeing you with it, and knowing that it could turn you away from the bright, wonderful boy I knew, it just... scared me." 

"But I wasn't," Dan says, "I tried not to... I'm still... I try to be a good person." 

"You are, love. I'm sorry I didn't... there's no excuse. I know. I was just making it up as I went along. I had no idea how to handle all of... that." 

"Oh." 

Dan doesn't have any more words to meet the things she's said. It's difficult sometimes to remember that his parents aren't superheroes, or villians, they're just people. 

Flawed, complicated people that make mistakes. She tried her best, and maybe that wasn't good enough. It definitely wasn't. But Dan has to decide whether he can live with that, whether he can accept the apology she's offering him. One human being to another. 

"I shouldn't have made you ashamed of it." 

Dan gasps, it's wet and it gets caught in his throat. His eyes sting, and he bends his leg at the knee, dropping his chin down onto his kneecap. The box is in the back of his wardrobe, magic gold and thrumming inside of it. Inside him. 

Emotions and magic go hand in hand. You can't repress everything forever. 

"I'm so sorry, Dan," she says, "we should have talked about this long ago. But I wasn't sure... I didn't know you still thought about it." 

Dan sobs, openly, into the fabric of his jeans. "Yeah," he says, "I do. Sometimes... quite a lot actually."

"I know I might not be the person you want to talk to about it," she says, "but if I can help... make sense of my part in it. Then I will." 

"I... yeah." Dan sighs, regaining his composure, suring himself up against the flood of everything running through him. "Not yet, though. I can't... not yet." 

"Of course love," she says, "I'll be here when you're ready. And if you think you want to talk to your--" 

"I don't."

"Dan," she says, softly, "it might be good for you to at least... will you think about it?" 

"No." his voice is hard, blunt, more forceful than he intends but it's him that feel scared now. 

His mum has apologised, offered him more than he ever expected to get, but he knows that won't happen a second time, and he doesn't think he can deal with what that conversation might entail. 

"Alright," his mum says, "you let me know if you change your mind. And Dan?" 

"Hm?" 

"It was really nice to hear from you. It's nice to talk, I miss you, you know?" 

"Yeah mum," he says, "I... I miss you too." 

When Dan hangs up, the phone silent and still in his hand, he's surprised to find that he means it. That there has been a whole in the part of his life where his mum had been. He has, despite it all, missed her. 

Maybe it doesn't have to be that way anymore. 

Dan looks at his phone for a long time, and then to the box in the back of his wardrobe. They are both silent observers back at him, glaring, judgmental and expecting. 

"Fine," Dan says, to himself or to the both of them, "fine."

Dan stands up from the floor, limb aching. He rubs at his face, clearing the moisture under each of his eyes and taking a deep breath. 

You can't repress things forever.


End file.
